Story Excerpt
The Tattenhall Tontine
by Marilyn Todd
The Beatles were belting through the speakers loud enough to bend the walls, urging everyone to get back to where they once belonged. Tony didn’t hear. He didn’t notice groovy girls wafting around with false eyelashes longer than their miniskirts, much less care that Judy Garland had just died. His focus was on the heap of pound notes on the table, and the three eights, the king, and the six in his hand.
Winner takes all. That’s how it had always been with the Tattenhall Tearaways, meaning there was more at stake here than just poker.
Or Tony having his shiny Triumph Herald repossessed.
Three eights, a king, and a six . . .
“I’ll see your five pounds and raise you five pounds more.”
One fifth of his week’s pay packet, but what the hell. This was a winning hand, and that’s what it’s all about. Winning.
“I’m out.” Dave slapped his cards face down. Rob had already bailed.
Vince spiked his long, dark, George Harrison hair out of his face with resignation. “Me too.”
Good. That just left him and Ken slugging it out, and there was no point trying to read his opponent for tells. These boys had all grown up in the same run-down back-to-backs in London’s East End’s Tattenhall, where dark Satanic mills were closing by the day, thanks to the surge of Taiwanese sweatshops. They’d all attended the same class in junior school, gathering the same grazed knees, black eyes, and missing caps, before trooping next door to the secondary modern, where they’d kick hell out of a football the minute the bell went, and—whenever the opportunity arose—pupils from the nearby grammar school.
Right from the start, every game was competitive, every score kept. From marbles to conkers, each kid vied to be top dog, even if it came down to who did Mr. Warren cane the most this week? Vince? The others had an obligation to outdo him, so if Billy got caned more times the week after, how could they up the stakes to earn an extra whack? Tony’s legs still had the scars, but that’s how it was back then and that’s how it was now. Only instead of getting caned, it was who got laid the most. No scars from that, then! Dave reckoned rivalry ran through their veins. Tony called him a square for even thinking it. This was survival of the fittest, man. Winner takes all, no matter how small or petty the challenge.
“I’ll take your fiver, Tony Barnes, and raise you ten.”
Ken was bluffing, but by God, was Tony going to make him sweat. As the Rolling Stones rocked the roof tiles and rattled the pint mugs behind the bar where the third brawl of the night was already breaking out, he pretended to consider his hand, thinking back to how, once they left school, the dynamics changed. For one thing, Joe put some chick in the family way, then did what any self-respecting father-to-be would do. Went off to join the navy. Ray was taken on as an engineering apprentice in Manchester. Billy’s family took assisted passage to Australia, while Dougie, poor bugger, was killed in a hit-and-run.
Which left just him, Ken, Dave, Rob, and Vince to throw their earnings down their throats on a Saturday night and chat up the dolly birds. Waiting for Kenny to fold, he thought back to when they’d sit round the table, this table as it happened, filling in the football coupons, trying to predict the outcome of Saturday’s matches. Despite being just the five of them, they still formed a syndicate, the same way people did on the factory floor or in shops, only theirs was different. Survival of the fittest again. Whoever got the lowest prediction rate bought the drinks.
It was a gas, though. You’d pick a dozen or so matches out of sixty-odd, then decide whether it was win, lose, or draw. That grid was bloody complex, mind. For one thing, the bookies differentiated between home and away wins, so to maximise your chances, you’d fill in what’s called full-perm entries, putting a cross against every possible combination of eight matches selected from the total and entered as a single line. Okay, it cost—what? Forty, fifty times the cost of a single line, so what?
Like roast beef on Sunday, doing the pools was a British tradition; name someone who didn’t fill ’em in. Most posted them off, but the Tattenhall boys’d meet in the pub to fill out the coupons before the agent from Vernons Pools came to relieve them of the entry fee. Rough as the Three Tuns was, it beat cramping up in Rob’s mum’s living room, listening to his dad wheeze on the oxygen machine that kept him (barely) alive, or have Kenny’s stepfather lecture them on the evils of gambling. Gambling? It was only a few quid apiece, but no. Ken’s stepdad wasn’t having any of that.
“Mug’s game,” he’d snort.
Like drinking a bottle of scotch every night wasn’t. Or beating the shit out of Ken’s mum was a virtue.
Come five o’clock Saturday, they’d cluster round Tony’s transistor, hearts in their mouths as the results were announced, and the roars that went up if they won a fiver were deafening. Every blue-collar worker’s dream, winning the pools! And the time, bloody hell, when they won a pony? Twenty-five bleedin’ quid? Far out, man! The pub landlord made a tidy profit that night.
“I’ll take your tenner and raise you ten,” Tony said.
Not only would these three eights keep his Triumph Herald out of the bailiff’s hands, he could trade it in for that bright blue Ford Cortina he’d had his eye on for a while. Across the table, Kenny’s face made a doorframe look expressive. No change there, then. Leaving Tony thinking about the day the telegram arrived. TELEGRAM, for God’s sake. They don’t send them out for a pony!
“A hundred grand?”
£93,863 to be precise, but close enough—and two fingers to Kenny’s bastard stepdad.
“What are you going to do with it, lads . . . ?”
Read the exciting conclusion in this month’s issue on sale now!
Copyright © 2025 The Tattenhall Tontine by Marilyn Todd