Mountains of the Moon (22 page)

“Cups and glasses aren’t allowed on the baize,” Darren explains.

He unclips a rope and goes around the dealing side of the table, tells us loads of things we didn’t know. It’s a beautiful thing, a roulette wheel, craftsmanship and engineering, random sequence of thirty-six numbers, alternating red and black cept for zero which is green.

“What wood is it?”

Darren’s looking at the scars on my cheekbone, at the colors beaming long side my eye, and I know that the diamond in my ear has come alive under the lights. He’s looking at that. It makes the one in his ring look silly. He members the question.

“Sycamore,” he says. “Every day the wheels are polished and checked with a spirit level.”

There are stacks of colored chips on the table, parked gainst the curve of the wheel.

“But if you have up to nine people playing, how do you know which customer is playing with which color?” Gwen says.

“It’s your job to remember which color you’ve given to which customer. Sometimes you can have more than nine people playing at one time; some people play with cash-chips or even put wads of cash on the layout.”

He pulls seven stacks of pink chips toward him, changes his hand position and zooms them cross the table for us to share. They don’t stagger or fall over. He tells us about the outside bets, odd, even, red, black, low and high numbers, all even money.

“Cept if it drops in zero,” I says.

“Oh yes,” Gwen says. “What happens then?”

“Stuffed,” I suggest.

“You could put it that way,” Darren says.

We look at the layout and he shows us the valid betting positions and the odds for each. There’s a brass slot in the table with a plastic plunger. Can we guess?

“Money,” Gwen says, right answer.

“At four in the morning when the casino closes, the drop boxes are emptied. There’s a rota for people to stay behind and do the count. Place your bets,” he says.

Gwen tries to get everything covered; I put a whole stack on red. As the ball comes toward him he picks it up. A click of his fingers sends it racing around, tight up under the carved wooden rim.

“The ball is now spinning in the opposite direction to the wheel. If you listen you can hear the sound change as the ball starts slowing down and starts to descend into the bowl.”

It does, changes key, pings off a stud, then dribbles slightly on the metal edge and drops with a clatter in 29 black. We lost everything. He picks up a dinky bottle made of white glass.

“We place this on the layout to mark the winning number,” he says. “It’s called a Dolly.”

I sees me in mirrors all over the place.

“How long does the training take?” Gwen says.

He talks us through the details. Six weeks. Rubbish pay. They teach you to deal American roulette and the card games, blackjack and punto banco.

“And poker,” he says. “If we feel you have the right qualities for it. How do you feel about it, now that you’ve got some idea?” he says last.

“Interesting,” Gwen says.

I nod cos it is.

“Let me give you a tour and then we’ll get to the paperwork.”

We follow him back through the heavy doors and around the side of reception. The staffroom is full of people eating Pot Noodles and smoking and watching
Home and Away
. Makeup and hair dos and tons of diamanté, seems funny in the afternoon. Casino opens at two o’clock and the clock on the wall says twenty-five to.

“Say hello,” Darren tells them.

“Hello,” they says. Uniform, couldn’t care less. Boys wear Edwardian suits with waistcoats, stripy to match the girls’ tops. The girls’ changing room has got lights around all the mirrors, and girls busy at lockers, stinks like a poofs’ parlor. Then we push back into the gaming hall and walk the circuit, past high kidney-shaped tables that say
Blackjack
in a sweep cross them. We step up to a cash desk staged over in the far corner. Behind brass bars and a bulletproof screen, a young fat Edwardian bloke in a bow tie and glasses is counting sliding piles of money. The door is two-foot thick with a wheel lock like a submarine.

“This is today’s float,” Darren says. “And our newly trained cashier, we call him Eton Boy. Say hello, Quentin.”

“Hello, Quentin,” we says on cue.

Laughs, he’s got fat red lips and a tash and his hair slapped down, wet-looking.

“Hello.” He’s shy but friendly enough.

If this is the float can’t magine what the takings is like. Up in the seating area by the bar we wait while Darren gets the application forms.

“It is really rather exciting.” Gwen’s feet jig on the carpet.

When I look at the job application form it don’t seem likely. I chew the pen at
Schooling
. Write O levels: English and Maths and what else, Geography. I give myself Cs.
Work history.
There’s an ashtray on the table, I light a cigarette. I keep it simple. Farm worker, one year. Racing stable, two years. Garden center, two years. Never mentions the other jobs.
Skills
. Walking in wellies. Shovelling shit. Horse whispering. Naming trees.
Reason for leaving
. Sore points.
Current employment.
None.
References. Criminal record. Next of kin.

Shame.

I looks up at a mirrorball turning, sees roulette wheels swirling in it.

LA-SO-SO-MAY YOU BLOOM AND GROW…

“BLOOM AND…GROW…FOR…ever”

She can’t sing no more. I int got eyes, Auntie Fi. I want to lift my hand up.

“Auntie Fi,” I try to say but can’t find my mouth or lips or tongue. They gave me a tablit for a heart attack. I just got my brain and ears. My hearts int even beating. I’m dead. Auntie Fi. I’m dead and it int too bad. Auntie Fi, I’m dead but I int gone to a dead place yet, cos my policeman with the cough, coughs. And Auntie Fi is crying, small sounds h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-all together sounds like the worst-ist crying of all, like finished all the way to the bottom. My mum’s done her. I know it. H-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h. Breathe, Auntie Fi. H-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h. Breathe, Auntie Fi. H-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h. I’m dead, Auntie Fi. H-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h.

I got a nose and lilies breathing down it; got the smell so sweet it hurts my teef. I got teef but no jaws. I int got nothing can move. Can’t open my eyes, Auntie Fi. While she cries I keep slipping way. I’m trying to stay, Auntie Fi, hanging on to the name and the lily smell.

Don’t know how long.

Auntie Fi’s breathing whistles like wind through graveyard trees. I know she is unwrapping the lilies cos the smell blasts from the trumpet flowers.

“I’ll fetch a vase,” a nurse says.

The nurse brings the vase back.

I see Auntie Fi with lily flowers. Members flower ranging in her shed. Auntie Fi, they is my favorite. Auntie Fi in the olden days learned me how to be a florist. Auntie Fi, say something to me.

Car keys.

I want to arst her who I is and how come Catherine Clark. I want to say her name. Her feeling is leaving, her shoes is clipperty-clop.

Auntie Fi!

Auntie Fi!

I has to fight with all my eyes to get a picture and hold it steady. Auntie Fi in the doorway looking at the floor; taps three times on the door frame and bows out, down the corridor.

“Catherine? Come on, love,” the nurse says. “Come on, time to wake up.”

My head rolls and my eyes roll. My tongue is sticky with lily smell.

“Your auntie came while you were asleep. She left the flowers and something for you.”

She left me an I-Spy book. I take it out of the brown paper bag.
I-Spy Animals at the Zoo.
I look through all the pages and read all the words. Int never seen an Oryx or a Secretary Bird.

The night nurse has brung me jarmas from Sarah my Social Worker.

“Better than this scratchy old hospital gown,” she says.

“Where is my conkers?” I arsts.

“Come on, love,” she says, “slip out of that gown and pop these lovely fleecy ones on.”

When she’s gone, I take them off. I int pink or teddy bears. I int even Catherine Clark.

“What do you want for lunch tomorrow?” says a lady with a clipboard.

“She’s going tomorrow,” my policeman says.

The mirrorball turns. Gwen is reading my application form.

“Horse Racing Stable?”

“Yeah—Mick the Spit, he used to come in the pub and gob on the carpet, ‘Jackie, come here,’ he used to say. ‘Come here, ya wooden cunt.’”

“Newmarket,” she says. “But all of the times we’ve been to see Piggy. So you know about horses?”

“Uh-huh, dangerous at both ends, uncomfortable in the middle.”

“Don’t tell me you can actually ride?”

I look at Gwen’s application form. Nine A levels. Bilingual: English and Welsh, she’s written. Private Investigations. Well. Customer Service, I can’t see it. The Pit Boss, Darren, is back with tests.

“Can you two sit separately, so that you can’t see each other’s answers? No calculators or written sums, you need to get the totals in your head if you can.”

Gwen jigs to the next table. Earlier Darren told us the odds. Straight-Ups and Splits and Corners and Streets, and another one I forget. The sums is based on the odds and how many chips is positioned, where, on a roulette layout.

The sums continue down the page. Starts to tremble. Starts to sweat.

Two thirty-fives is 70. Four thirty-fives is 140. Eight thirty-fives is 280. 280.

280.

280.

How many is two hundred eighty? I look up at the mirrorball, sees girls in
Railway Children
hats, all with a cigarette clamped between their teef. I shrug up at them. They nod their heads, slow, sure thing, sure thing, like diamonds winking. I shake my head.

“Have you got 490?” Gwen says.

Darren has wandered off.

“490,” she whispers, “then 119, 167, 608, 384, 437 and 368? Have you got the same?”

“Has now,” I says.

The girls in the mirrorball all wink at me.

(Latin crest,
some fearfulli solemni whatever
)

Mr. J.M. Lawson QC

Beaufort Chambers

Chancery Square

Lincoln’s Inn

London WC1A 2PP

January 24, 1977

Dear Mr. Lawson QC,

Re: 2078: Your client, Catherine Clark

With regard to your letter of January 15, 77, I sympathize and whilst I do endeavor to act in your client’s best interest, my duty is to the protection of the public and the enforcement of the Law.

The Ministry of Social Services and the Home Office require time to consider what they might wish to do with Catherine Clark. No specific time is indicated. I make no criticisms of those departments, but it is a most unhappy thing that with all the resources of this country, there is, at this time, no place suitable for the treatment and secure accommodation of this girl. Therefore I am unable to make the recommendation that I would wish to make.

In the case of a child of this age no question of imprisonment arises, I have only the power of detention left. To this end she will have to remain Remanded in Custody at Red Roofs Young Offenders Institution until such a time as she is fit to stand trial, or until the building of the new child psychiatric custody unit in Surrey is completed next year, or until there is a vacancy at the Girls’ Remand Center in Battersea which is only ever short-term in any event.

Yours whatever,

Judge G. Reginald Witherington-Roycroft

G
wen’s back, her headlights flood the dining winders. I still magines Piggy standing there even though he’s gone to live in the field. Panda goes mad. I make tea. Gwen kicks her shoes off and feels if the carpet is dry fore kneeling down by the fire.

“It was interesting,” she says.

She tips red plastic casino chips from her handbag onto the carpet and they roll off. I gather them up in a stack.

“I have to get the feel of a stack of twenty and practice cutting it down in fives. I have to learn my thirty-five times table, up to twenty, fluently, backward and forward, by tomorrow.” She puts her hand over the stack but her short fingers are very hard pushed to reach the bottom chip.