The money lender
The lady pulled her shawl close about her thin body against the cold as she approached the door to the bar, cuddling her baby under the shawl to try to keep it warm. Pushing open the door, she wiped the snow from her straggly hair and thin face before looking around. In a dim corner she spotted a man.
He was sitting at a table counting some money. On the table a bottle of gin and glasses. In the shadows behind were two tough looking men. As she approached the table, she noticed the snow on the man’s hat brim. He has just arrived, she thought.
He looked up when she stopped the other side of the table. His podgy face showed a hard expression his lips drawn into a thin line. There was not a hint of a smile and his eyes were like hard black ebony. He put the money away in a canvas bag and shoved this into the pocket of his overcoat. Reaching under his coat he withdrew a small note book from an inside pocket. Turning the pages he stopped when found what he was looking for.
“ Ha Mrs Waters. I am glad to see you. That will be five shillings.”
“ Mr. Burke, I came to ask you to defer my payment this week. My husband has had an accident at work and is off sick. We have no money coming in. I cannot pay you.”
The man’s expression got harder, his eyes like coals. “ We have an agreement you and I. I expect you to keep up the payments as agreed. How am I to live if all my clients welch on what they owe me? If you cannot pay, I will have to send my associates round to take what is of value so that I have my money.”
Mrs Waters tried not to cry but tears still ran down her cheeks. “ If you take anything from my home, I will have nothing. Besides there is not much of value left in the rooms. There is a good chance I will not be there when your men come. Unless I manage to pay the rent, the landlord threatens to throw me and my husband out onto the streets. If that happens, the chances are my baby will get ill and not survive. Have you no heart?”
Mr Burke shook his head. “ That Mrs Waters is not my problem. If I let you off your payments, all my other clients will want to defer theirs. Now you will go away and find the money you owe. I am not responsible for what happens to you. All I am asking is for you to pay me the money you owe. That is not much to ask for is it?”
Turning to one of the men standing in the shadows, he ordered. “ Escort Mrs Waters back to her home and see if she has anything of value to the tune of five shillings. Then come back here.”
The man took Mrs Waters’ elbow and escorted her from the bar. She shivered in the cold blast of air and wrapped the shawl tighter round her baby as she left the bar into a blast of freezing air.
