Greyhound for Breakfast

Foreign language users

A wise man resists playing cards with foreign language users. This is a maxim Mister Joseph Kerr should always have been well aware of. So how come he had succumbed to temptation yet again? Because he thought he would take them, that’s how. If you had discussed the point prior to play he would have nodded in a perfunctory fashion — that’s how much a part of him the maxim was. And yet he still succumbed. Of course. Gamblers are a strange breed. In fact, when he noticed his pockets were empty he frowned. That is exactly what he did, he frowned. Then he stared at the foreign language users who by this time had forgotten all about him. And the croupier was shuffling the deck for a new deal. And yes, she was also concealing her impatience in an unsubtle way, this croupier, and this unsubtlety was her method of displaying it, her impatience.

Mister Joseph Kerr nudged the spectacles up his nose a wee bit, a nervous gesture. His chair moved noisily, causing the other players to glance at him.

But what was he to do now? There was nothing he could do now. No, nothing to be done. It was something he just had to face. And yet these damn foreign language users had taken his money by devices one could scarcely describe as being other than less than fair, not to put too fine a point on things. And how in the name of all that’s holy could the fact that it was himself to blame be of any consolation?

He scratched his ear and continued to stand there, by the chair, and then he sighed in an exaggerated manner but it was bitterly done, and he declared how things had gone too far for him now, that he had so to speak come to the end of his tether. The croupier merely looked at him in reply but this look might well have been a straightforward appeal for a new player.

Mister Joseph Kerr shrugged. Then he stood to the side, making space for the new player who moved easily onto the seat. There was a pause. Mister Joseph Kerr had raised his eyebrows in a slightly mocking fashion. He smiled at the new player and touched him on the shoulder, saying how he should definitely pay heed to that which he knew so thoroughly beforehand. The new player glared at the hand on his shoulder. What’s the meaning of this? he murmured.

In all probability he too was a foreign language user. Mister Joseph Kerr nodded wearily. Maybe he was just bloody well growing old! Could that be it? He sighed as he strolled round the table, continuing on in the style of somebody heading to an exit. He entered the gents’ washroom and gazed at himself in the mirror. It was a poor show right enough, this tired face he saw; and something in it too as if, as if his eyes had perhaps clouded over, but his spectacles of course, having misted over. The thought how at least he was breathing, at least he was breathing, that was worth remembering.