Writing for Fun
May 2018
Definitely Maybe - Jeanette Rothwell
This story is about my Uncle Arthur (my Mother’s Brother). He was the apple of my Grandmother’s eye and she was always having to rescue him from the scrapes he got into. He had been a soldier in the Second World War, serving in the Eighth Army in Egypt as a Despatch Rider but he had an accident on his motorcycle which meant that he was discharged from the Army with a broken leg which had not healed correctly resulting in a permanent limp.
He was quite musical and played the piano and an accordion, accompanying his singing. His party piece at Christmas was to sing Beautiful Dreamer just like Bing Crosby which made all the assembled ladies quite dewy eyed thinking of their chaps still at war.
I was quite a little girl just after the war but I can clearly remember the sequence of events. Quite out of the blue and much against my Grandmother’s wishes, he married Betty, his long term girlfriend. They had popped into a Registry office to do the deed and then blithely announced their nuptials to the family. My Grandmother was furious. Aunty Betty, as I knew her, worked in the big Post Office sorting office, Mount Pleasant and I think my Grandmother had thought it would have been a passing fancy.
Nan (as I called my Grandmother) worked in a Tobacco Factory as a supervisor and managed to get Uncle Arthur a job there. For his next birthday, she bought him a very flashy looking accordion and was very proud of him when he played to the neighbours (We did not have a TV in those days).
Trouble was, Uncle Arthur was a gambler. At that time, bets could be placed with a seedy scruffy looking chap who stood on the corner of a nearby street, keeping a lookout for any local policemen. My Grandfather also liked the odd flutter and he used to use me to deliver his bets to the Bookie. He would wrap half a crown in a scrap of paper on which would be written something like ‘2/6 EW’ (each way) followed by the name of the horse and the time of the race, so I knew how easy it was to place a bet.
The accordion became an object of interest to my Grandmother. Uncle Arthur and his wife now lived in a flat adjacent to us and he would keep the instrument at the bottom of his wardrobe. My Grandmother would often sneak a look into that wardrobe and if it wasn’t there, she would know exactly where it was, at the pawnbrokers. Almost on a regular basis, she redeemed the accordion for her son and he would then lose on the horses and the accordion would once again take a trip to ‘Uncle’s’ (the Pawnbroker).
The flats we lived in at that time were in a set of buildings and there was quite a close community existing there. Uncle Arthur started up a Christmas Club for his neighbours. They would pay in a set amount each week in order to have enough money for Christmas presents, so when November was almost over, everyone in the Club wanted their money out so that they could start spending. Trouble was, he had gambled it all away!
My Grandmother was furious and there were a lot of raised voices in the home. He bowed his head in shame and this time My Grandmother had to dip deeply into her savings in order to bail him out.
By this time, Betty had given birth to two boys and was struggling to put food on the table. She had managed to get some homework which consisted of making wire candle holders for birthday cakes, with a funny little machine that had a mechanism for bending the wires into these candle holders. At that time there was a TV programme called Twenty Questions which involved a panel attempting to guess contestant’s occupation. They would start off by miming their movements. Betty gave them a very vague wave of the arms, and, much to her surprise, she beat the panel and won a vacuum cleaner which she brought home with great pride.
Uncle Arthur’s eyes gleamed and my Grandmother knew full well how his mind was working. She laid into him long and hard that he must never go to the Pawnbrokers again and give up the gambling immediately. At that time gambling laws began to change and the street bookie disappeared. Gambling shops started to appear.
To my Nan Uncle Arthur promised, definitely, to give up the gambling but even as a young girl, I could see that his face said, ‘maybe’.