Never Love a Gambler by Keith Ridgway

Author:Keith Ridgway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2014-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

My wife has prepared a meal for me, and the child is still awake, and I do not talk about my day — I eat and say nothing and I watch them at play. I wish to live with them. I wish to stay here in my home, with my family, to be present when my life comes to its end, to be here amongst the things I know and almost understand. I will not work for Mr Beresford any longer. Tomorrow I will go to him and say that he must find another keeper for his plans.

I am tired but I am afraid of sleeping. I repeat to myself that I am to quit my position, in the hope that it will influence my dreams and that I will not once more spend my night eavesdropping on the future, or on other times that are neither the future nor the past, but cracked views of the time I occupy. I am tired of the chronologies that compete and intertwine and which clutter my mind like weeds.

My son plays with pebbles on a board. He moves them and lets them roll, and determines where they rest by tilt and balance of the wood, moving his hands as if struggling with a great weight. I can see him deciding in his mind which way they will go, and I can see what he likes and does not like, and I can see that he likes to come close to dropping them, to let them run along the edge until it is almost too late, and then to save them with the smallest movement of his tiny hand. He is skilful at it. My wife sees me watching, and she smiles at me proudly, and I return her smile, and I think that we are happy here, by the river, the three of us.

I remember the woman who called, I remember the picture of her that I am left with, of her acceptance, her pride. It comes to me suddenly, unexpectedly, and I do not welcome it. There is too much evidence here, my head swims through it, and I wonder who she is, and I think of saying her name to my wife, but I do not want to tie one to the other, I do not want to mix the stories that flow here. I finish my food and I kiss my wife and my son and I go out of our home and I stand in the dark and watch the river.

I know that I am not being sensible, that I do not see things clearly, that my mind worries at loose threads, that I cannot find room enough for all that I see, all that I hear, all that I dream. I sit by the trough and look at the river, and I let my mind run on in the hope that it will tire itself, but it collects things, gathers them together, and the great mass that

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