by Ted Lewis
From the outside, the Premier Social and Sporting Club looks like a Temperance billiard hall. Inside it’s not much different either except that if you pass Storey the manager a quid on top of the price of a bottle he’ll provide you with whatever you feel like drinking and maybe even polish the glasses. The only other catering is hot bacon sandwiches and cups of tea and all packs of cards for the games are dispensed at the counter. The only lighting in the hall apart from the rectangles above the billiard tables comes from behind the counter, illuminating the chocolate bars and the cellophane of the cigarette packets beneath the dirty glass of the display cases. Where the billiard tables end, in the gloom at the far end of the hall, there are two double doors inset with small panes of frosted glass. Behind these doors is where the card games take place. There are several tables, none of them genuine card tables, just an assortment of the kind of cheap stuff you’d find in any living room, all arranged at random with no table better placed than another, but on any given night the centre table could be carrying a solo school at a shilling a call and the table near the tiled fireplace could be carrying a game of brag that would buy you a new Mercedes if you had the nerve to sit down to it. The two double doors are usually only open towards the beginning of an evening. The closing of the doors has nothing to do with a fear of the filth turning up and sorting everybody; often one of the filth would be involved in a game. It is just that some of the players in the higher games prefer to know by the rattling of the doors that someone is just about to enter so that if that someone were to be a body they could do without seeing they can prepare themselves for that kind of eventuality. And tonight, because of the lateness of the hour, the doors are closed and only slight movements of frosted shadows suggest that the cardroom is in use.
As for the rest of the place, it isn’t exactly full of riveting action. Only two of the tables are occupied. On one of the tables a couple of old-timers are using the cues until the place closes up and they have to find somewhere else to keep warm. At the other table a four-hander is in progress, and although the Premier is an all-male establishment two of the players are girls who could be any age from sixteen to twenty-five. The only reason they’re being allowed to grace the dusty gloom of the Premier is because one of the men they’re with is a famous face, Ronnie Grafton, last year’s leading goal-scorer in the league. But that was last year. Under the snooker lights his baby face looks a little puffier than in the papers when he’s featuring in the latest in evening dress, his belly looks a bit looser, his hair is not its usually beautifully barbered self. Nor, as he stretches himself to try a shot he’s never going to get, is his expression as open and angelic as it is when he races back to the centre line after scoring. Perhaps that’s because he hasn’t done so much scoring this season. Perhaps because the rumour is that he’ll be on a free transfer to Millwall if he doesn’t cut out everything except what he’s supposed to do on the field. He makes the shot and he misses. His male opponent, a well-groomed hanger-on, tells Ronnie what bad luck it was and the two girls agree that it really was hard luck.
As Con and I approach the counter Con says, “He can’t even do it with a stick now.”
Storey is leaning on the counter, chin in hands, watching the game with the same kind of interest he’d watch an empty table. He doesn’t look at us but when we get to the counter he says, “What do you two want?”
“A cup of tea and a waddy,” I tell him.
“Nothing else?”
“What else is there?”
“Only last time you showed your faces in here I finished up with a broken cue and Michael Coughlan finished up with three broken fingers.”
“I offered to pay for the tape.”
“Tape didn’t help the cue.”
“Well, the thing was, it was one of your bent ones and Michael very kindly suggested I tried to straighten it on his fingers.”
Storey calls to his wife to get us two bacon sandwiches and two cups of tea and then he says, “I thought he’d be enough for one night.” He nods in Ronnie Grafton’s direction, who’s pouring a large Scotch into a glass balancing on the edge of the snooker table. Judging by the sweat on his forehead he doesn’t exactly need another large one. “Now I get you two. Who are you looking for?”
I shake my head. “Snooker. We just felt like a game of snooker and a bacon sandwich.”
Storey lifts himself off the counter and opens the flap. “In that case I’ll rack them up for you. Just to make sure.”
Storey strolls over to one of the tables and slides the triangle around on the baize. Con and I lean against the counter and watch Ronnie Grafton’s game. It’s the turn of the girl he’s playing with to make her shot.
She’s got a red on the edge of a pocket with the cue ball a couple of inches away from it and on the edge of the opposite pocket there is the black to follow. She is facing away from us and when she leans over the table her skirt rides up and Con and I are given a treat. Grafton sees what we’re seeing and doesn’t like the fact that we don’t look away when he turns his gaze on us. The girl makes her shot and all she manages to do is move the red to the opposite side of the pocket.
“Jesus Christ,” Grafton says. “I don’t fucking believe it.”
The girl straightens up and begins to apologise but Grafton cuts in on her and says, “You’re bleeding useless, aren’t you? Pigging useless. Nobody but you could miss a shot like that.”
“I don’t know,” Con says to me, but loud enough for Grafton to hear. “I thought it was rather a nice angle myself.”
“Yes,” I say. “And she must be fond of Ronnie, too. She even wears his colours.”
Grafton puts his cue down on the table and walks over to us.
“All right,” he says. “Who are you two?”
“Scouts for Millwall,” I tell him. “We need a new ball boy. Interested?”
Grafton smiles. “Oh yeah,” he says. “A couple of those. Wherever I go, there’s always a couple of those. Can’t fucking stand it, can you, you being you and me being me.”
“Who is he, Con?” I say.
Con shakes his head.
“You can’t stand it, can you? Can’t stand the money I make or the birds I pull.”
“I could stand her anytime,” Con says.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” Grafton says. “I don’t like chancers looking up my girlfriend’s drawers, right?”
“Then tell her to wear longer skirts or give up snooker,” I say.
“And I don’t like clever cunts, either,” Grafton says.
“Ronnie,” says Storey, beginning to drift away from the snooker table in Grafton’s direction.
“And I’m going to show you how much I don’t like
chancers looking up my girlfriend’s drawers.”
“Ronnie,” Storey says again.
“Shut your face.”
“Ronnie, this is Jack Carter and Con McCarty and they work for Gerald and Les.”
The remark manages to stop Grafton swaying for a second or two. He looks at us both, looking properly now, checking the way we look against what Storey’s just said. It doesn’t take him long. And now he begins to ask himself how he’s going to be able to back down after styling himself so brave.
“Go back to the game, Ronnie,” Storey says. “You’ve got some points to catch up.”
There’s really nothing else for him to do. He tries out his hardest look on us but he’s still got to turn away and when he gets back to his table he starts on his mate by asking him what’s he waiting for and why hasn’t he started his shot yet. Storey goes back behind the counter and Storey’s old lady arrives with the tea and the waddies.
“He ought to be grateful to you,” Con says.
“I’m not doing him any favours,” Storey says. “I’ve got a bet on Saturday’s match.”
I take a bite of my bacon waddy.
; “Decent game in there tonight, is there?” I ask Storey.
Storey takes a packet of Weights from his cardigan pocket and sticks one in his mouth and says, “There’s a couple of games. Depends what you call decent.”
“Depends on who’s playing. A game’s only as good as the players.”
“And the next question is who’s playing in them,” Storey says. “Jesus, Jack, you think I’m fucking barmy?”
“Listen, I’ve told you. Like I tell everybody. It’s worth a trip down here just for the bacon waddies. Best bacon waddies in London, these are.”
Storey lights his cigarette and shrugs.
“I’m past caring,” he says. “I really am. If there’s going to be trouble there’s going to be trouble. There’s sweet fuck all I can do about it.”
“There’ll be no trouble, Mr. Storey,” Con says. “On that you have my word as a good Catholic.”
I finish my sandwich and pick up my cup and saucer.
“I think I’ll stroll through and have a little look,” I say to Con. “You follow me through in a minute.”
Carrying my cup and saucer, I walk over to the double doors and open one of them and slide through and close the door behind me.
There are two games in progress. The small one is Black Lady for a shilling a point and at the centre table it is three-card brag, five players, a pound a round. Sitting at this table there is Albert Hill, Donald Mouncey, George Longman, Bob Shearer and Charlie Abbott, who is the brother-in-law of Jimmy Swann. Hill and Mouncey supply Gerald and Les’s shops with material which they make themselves. I wonder if Charlie knows that his sister is one of Hill and Mouncey’s biggest stars. Probably, because if there was touchable money around Charlie would be the first to know where it lay. Hill is in his late twenties, an ex-cameraman who formed his own production company to make commercials, a perfect setup for producing the stuff that by my calculations brings them in between thirty and forty thousand a year. Mouncey is Hill’s sideman, organizing the pulling and the packaging and the delivery of the goods to Gerald and Les. Mouncey’s a couple of years older than Hill and they both think they’re smarter than they really are. They tend towards the idea that they supply the goods, so Gerald and Les need them, instead of it being the other way round. But they don’t cause any trouble and they deliver the stuff so Gerald and Les allow them their delusions, content in the knowledge that one day they’ll learn the hard way about the things they should have been bright enough to realise for themselves. The other two, Bob Shearer and George Longman, are hired hands who do this and that and sometimes they’re lucky enough to pick up a grand, top wack, and when they pick up anything in that region they’re down here to see if they can double it, but the way they play they’re lucky if they only halve it. And that leaves Charlie Abbott who greets me like he greets everybody else, as if I’m the man from the insurance company.
“Jack,” he says, “Jack Carter. Christ, it’s been months.”
The only way to describe Charlie is to say that he looks as if he ought to have been in Jimmy James’s music hall act. He’s wearing a good shirt but the collar is two sizes too big and the tie which would have fetched a price from Arthur English is knotted so that the thin end straggles down to the bottom of his fly and the fat end just about reaches the bottom end of his breast pocket. The suit is new but not good; judging the way Charlie keeps shrugging his shoulders he feels like a million dollars, a phrase that must have been current when his taste in clothes was formed. His glasses shine like an expression of his pleasure on seeing me walk into the cardroom. The remaining strands of hair on the top of his head glisten with Brylcreem under the naked light bulbs.
“Hello, Charlie,” I say, “Hello, Albert.”
Albert is pleased that I’ve singled him out to be acknowledged. He’s that kind of character, builds himself up on the names he thinks salute him, shoots the shit to the people who find those names impressive. Charlie is something else again. Whereas Albert basically realises he’s lucky to be given the nod, Charlie really believes that people are as pleased to see him as he is to see them. He’s high on the excitement of his brother-in-law’s success, exhilarated by the fact he can always put the touch on his sister, so he doesn’t have to fail at trying to draw a few bob ever again. The closest Charlie ever got to success in his own right was when he sat behind the counter in one of Gerald and Les’s shops and drew a shilling for every punter’s note he took, but even then he had a bit of bother with his accounting system and it was only because Jimmy Swann spoke up for him he avoided getting some attention from Gerald and Les. And because Jimmy’s so heavy Charlie basks in his reflected light, imagining himself to be on the same level, deluding himself that he’s respected the same way Jimmy’s respected. Or was.
“Want to come in on this one, Jack?” Charlie says. He beams round the table at the others. “That’ll be all right, won’t it, lads?”
That’s the kind of fucking stupid thing Charlie says. There would be no way it wouldn’t be all right if I wanted to sit down. The door opens and Con comes in.
“No thanks, Charlie,” I say. “Leave me out of this one.”
“Good school, Jack,” he says. “Good school. We’re all very good players here. You’d enjoy the action.” Con winces and I now know who the asthmatic was who always sat behind me at Saturday morning pictures repeating the American phrases that glided down from the screen.
I shake my head. “I’ve had enough excitement for one night, Charlie. You carry on.”
“Been on a tickle have you?” Charlie says, looking at the others again, to see if they’re admiring his familiarity, but all they do is avoid his eyes so that they can be left out of any embarrassing repercussions that might be caused by his lack of tact. I don’t answer Charlie.
Instead I take a sip of my tea and Albert says, “Come on, Charlie. Let us know what you’re doing.”
They’re playing a version of brag where you’re dealt three cards, two face up, the third blind, and gamble against what your opponents might have face down, taking into consideration of course what you already see, and not knowing what you have face down yourself. Charlie has ace and three of spades showing, Bob Shearer has ten of spades and four of hearts, Albert five of diamonds and three of hearts, George Longman jack of spades and nine of spades. Mouncey has thrown in his hand so on the showing cards Charlie has the best chance with the ace, and he could have a flush, but then Albert could have a run, George could have a run or a running flush, and all of them could have nothing like Bob with his ten and his four.
But as Charlie has the psychological ace he’s very happy with the present state of affairs so he says, “I’m carrying on bragging, Albert, that’s what I’m doing.”
He grins at me as if I’m the only one in the room who appreciates his card-playing ability and floats another pound across the table. Albert follows him and so do the other two and inside a couple of minutes the pot is twenty quid heavier. At this point, George Longman tells the table he’s going to have a look and slides his blind card to the edge of the table and flicks the card with his thumb and the card snaps back face down and George is thoughtful for a while.
“All right,” he says. “I’ll go with you.”
For the privilege of looking at his third card George now has to pay double what the blind men are paying. How long he is prepared to continue paying two to one depends on how good his hand is or how far he’s going to bluff a bad one. Personally, I think he’s bluffing because George never had a good hand in his life; a bent dealer would never have to worry about George because he just naturally attracts all the shit in creation. Why he bothers to sit down at all I’ll never know. But he carries on throwing his money in and he’s just on the point of deciding whether or not to cut his losses when his mind is made up for him by Albert having a look at his own blind card to see if it goes with the five and the three and deciding that he
wants to let the others think it does by staying in.
So George says, “Fuck it, then, I’m out.”
Charlie gives a knowing smile and now the betting’s round to him.
“So,” he says to Albert, “you’re trying to tell me you’ve got three four five, are you Albert? You’re a cocky little devil, aren’t you? But I got this feeling, this little feeling, that you’re trying to bluff old Charlie out of what is due to him and what is rightfully his. So, the case being that you can’t see a blind man, I’m going to make you sweat a little bit, Albie, my little lad.” Charlie takes his wallet out, eases out some notes and slips the wallet away again.
Then with the kind of gesture that goes with a cod sleight-of-hand trick he places a fiver on the centre of the table. Albert looks at the fiver without any change of expression and thinks about it and then selects ten singles from his stack and pushes them into the middle. Charlie grins again as if he’s sussed everything out, everything’s as he reckoned it would be, and Bob throws his hand away.
“There’s bluffing and there’s bluffing,” he says, reaching for his bottle of light ale. But before he can wrap his fingers round it Con has leant forward and lifted the bottle to his lips. Bob watches Con while Con drinks but he doesn’t say anything.
Con puts the bottle back on the table and says to me, “I know it’s only Courage, but it tastes very sweet after
Maurice’s piss.”
Bob still doesn’t say anything but leaves the almost empty bottle on the spot where Con put it. In the meantime Charlie has donated another fiver to the kitty and now he sits back happy, confident that Albert’s going to stack.