The Credit Draper

Episode 32

Papa Kahn placed a hand on his shoulder. “This I will tell you, Avram. It is my final word on the subject. There will be no more football. “Celia will come out of school. She is a very clever girl but I need her at home. It is a great pity, but this I must do.

“Nathan? I don’t know what will happen to him. God willing, he will live through all of his troubles.

“But you, Avram. I want better things for you. I want you to stay on at school. To keep on with your studies. This is your chance to be a something, Avram. Not this … football.”

Fractured

The weather had turned from a bleary drizzle to solid rain by the late afternoon, making a dark day even darker. Avram stamped his soles against the brick wall.

Solly stood beside him, hands thrust deep in his pockets, glancing up and down the length of the back lane behind the tenement building a few hopscotch jumps from where they lived.

Solly snorted out a foggy breath. Just like a horse in a dawn mist, Avram thought, recalling for a moment a fractured memory from a childhood visit to the Rumbula Forest outside Riga.

His mother had lifted him up, settled him on the back of the horse. Or was it just a pony? He could feel the coarse hair, the powerful muscle and the warm life of the beast on the bare skin of his thighs.

He remembered the texture of the mane in his hands – tough and matted, not fine as expected.

“Just like a little Napoleon,” his mother had said before swinging him back to the ground. His mother had laughed. She wore the same pale blue dress she always seemed to wear in his memories.

Her teeth shone white in her laughter, not yellow and rotten like so many of the teeth he saw in this city’s population.

Across the back green and up at a second floor tenement window, Avram could see Solly’s father, Lucky Mo, his bald head round like a football, hunched over a desk in his shirt-sleeves, sorting out the betting slips in the cosy glow of a table-lamp.

There was a cigarette fixed to the corner of the man’s mouth. Sometimes when business was good, there would be a cigar. But not with the war on.

“Trains only for soldiers to front. Not for punters to tracks,” was how Lucky Mo summed up the wartime restrictions wiping out most of the season’s racing card.

The room in the tenement was Lucky Mo’s office. A single room in a single-end that at night housed a whole family glad to receive the day-time rent.

Solly was his father’s runner. That was his job now he’d left school. Learning the business, picking up the bets, writing down the odds on the back of a garden shovel, keeping guard in case the polis came noseying around. Which, according to Solly, was often.

“I’d love to have seen Begg’s face,” Solly said.

“It wasn’t funny.”

“I know. But ye were Begg’s big hope. He thought he’d discovered a new Patsy Gallacher. Imagine Patsy no being allowed to play ’cos it was Shabbos.”

“I got a note. I’m out of Begg’s class for good.”

“Yer having me on?”

“Scout’s honour.”

“Kids’d kill their mams for that. Yer one lucky b ***** d.”

Parcel

Avram thought about this. He wouldn’t kill his mother for anything. Not even to play football. He didn’t think he would kill Madame Kahn either, even if she was an enemy alien.

Papa Kahn had sent her another parcel of soap this morning. Avram had taken it to the post office for him. His hands still smelled of lavender.

“I’m not lucky at all. I missed out on the final.”

“Yer team lost six-nil. Ye wouldnae have made that much of a difference.” “Scouts from Celtic were there.” “Just as well, then. Ye wouldnae have wanted them to see ye on the back-end of such a hammering.”

“It was my only chance to …” “Haud yer whisht,” Solly said suddenly. “Somebody’s coming.”

A figure had appeared at the far end of the lane in the half-light. Head bowed, cap fixed tight, hands in pockets.

Solly let out a coded whistle and the lamp went out in the room on the second floor. Avram could still see the glow from Lucky Mo’s cigarette.

“Get ready to run when I tell ye,” Solly said, checking out the other end of the lane.

The figure looked up, glanced from side to side, then proceeded up the alleyway. Head bowed again, feet avoiding the puddles that had quickly formed.

“Maybe it’s the lampie,” Avram whispered. There was an open-flame gas lamp halfway between them and the approaching figure.

“Wheesht,” Solly hissed but then he relaxed. “It’s all right. It’s just a punter.”

The man came closer. As he reached Solly, he handed something over quick, then he was past. Avram looked after the man’s back retreating into the darkness.

Copper coins

Solly snorted out a foggy breath. Just like a horse in a dawn mist, Avram thought, recalling a memory from a childhood visit

He had never even got to see his face, just a whiff of beer breath. Solly whistled again. His father’s light came on.

“The Mad Hatter,” Solly said as he unwrapped the piece of paper.

There were some silver and copper coins inside. He squinted up close at the writing of the bet.

“Who’s The Mad Hatter?” “Bernie Ross. Works at Mathieson’s. Ye ken where I mean. Up at Gorbals Cross. Mathieson’s Hatter, Hosier and Outfitters. The Mad Hatter. That’s his nom de plume.” “His what?”

Solly smugly repeated the word. Avram managed a laugh. “Sounds like you’ve got a bunch of marbles stuck in your gob.”

“I thought ye were the smart one learning yer fancy French and Latin.” “Maybe if you pronounced it better.” “Well, anyway. It means ‘alias’, like the criminals have. Nobody uses their real names with their bets.” Solly reeled off a list of names and their aliases.

More tomorrow.

The Credit Draper is the first in a trilogy by J. David Simons. He has written five novels and is published by Saraband. His work can be purchased at saraband.net.