Loser Takes All

1

One adapts oneself to money much more easily than to poverty: Rousseau might have written that man was born rich and is everywhere impoverished. It gave me great satisfaction to pay back the manager and leave my key at the desk. I frequently rang the bell for the pleasure of confronting a uniform without shame. I made Cary have an Elizabeth Arden treatment, and I ordered the Gruaud Larose 1934 (I even sent it back because it was not the right temperature). I had our things moved to a suite and I hired a car to take us to the beach. At the beach I hired one of the private bungalows where we could sunbathe, cut off by bushes and shrubs from the eyes of common people. There all day I worked in the sun (for I was not yet quite certain of my system) while Cary read (I had even bought her a new book).

I discovered that, as on the stock exchange, money bred money. I would now use ten-thousand-franc squares instead of two-hundred-franc tokens, and inevitably at the end of the day I found myself richer by several million. My good fortune became known: casual players would bet on the squares where I had laid my biggest stake, but they had not protected themselves, as I had with my other stakes, and it was seldom that they won. I noted a strange aspect of human nature, that though my system worked and theirs did not, the veterans never lost faith in their own calculations—not one abandoned his elaborate schemes, which led to nothing but loss, to follow my victorious method. The second day, when I had already increased my five million to nine, I heard an old lady say bitterly, “What deplorable luck,” as though it were my good fortune alone that prevented the wheel revolving to her system.

On the third day I began to attend the Casino for longer hours—I would put in three hours in the morning in the kitchen and the same in the afternoon, and then of course in the evening I settled down to my serious labour in the Salle Privée. Cary had accompanied me on the second day and I had given her a few thousand francs to play with (she invariably lost them), but on the third day I thought it best to ask her to stay away. I found her anxious presence at my elbow distracting, and twice I made a miscalculation because she spoke to me. “I love you very much, darling,” I said to her. “but work is work. You go and sunbathe, and we’ll see each other for meals.”

“Why do they call it a game of chance?” she said.

“How do you mean?”

“It’s not a game. You said it yourself—it’s work. You’ve begun to commute. Breakfast at nine thirty sharp, so as to catch the first table. What a lot of beautiful money you’re earning. At what age will you retire?”

“Retire?”

“You mustn’t be afraid of retirement, darling. We shall see so much more of each other, and we could fit up a little roulette wheel in your study. It will be so nice when you don’t have to cross the road in all weathers.”

That night I brought my winnings up to fifteen million francs before dinner, and I felt it called for a celebration. I had been neglecting Cary a little—I realized that, so I thought we would have a good dinner and go to the ballet instead of my returning to the tables. I told her that and she seemed pleased. “Tired businessman relaxes,” she said.

“As a matter of fact I am a little tired.” Those who have not played roulette seriously little know how fatiguing it can be. If I had worked less hard during the afternoon I wouldn’t have lost my temper with the waiter in the bar. I had ordered two very dry Martinis and he brought them to us quite drowned in Vermouth—I could tell at once from the colour without tasting. To make matters worse he tried to explain away the colour by saying he had used Booth’s gin. “But you know perfectly well that I only take Gordon’s,” I said, and sent them back. He brought me two more and he had put lemon peel in them. I said, “For God’s sake how long does one have to be a customer in this bar before you begin to learn one’s taste?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I only came yesterday.”

I could see Cary’s mouth tighten. I was in the wrong, of course, but I had spent a very long day at the Casino, and she might have realized that I am not the kind of man who is usually crotchety with servants. She said, “Who would think that a week ago we didn’t even dare to speak to a waiter in case he gave us a bill?”

When we went in to dinner there was a little trouble about our table on the terrace: we were earlier than usual, but as I said to Cary we had been good customers and they could have taken some small trouble to please. However, this time I was careful not to let my irritation show more than very slightly—I was determined that this dinner should be one to remember.

Cary as a rule likes to have her mind made up for her, so I took the menu and began to order. “Caviare,” I said.

“For one,” Cary said.

“What will you have? Smoked salmon?”

“You order yours,” Cary said.

I ordered ‘bresse à l’estragon à la broche’, a little Roquefort, and some wild strawberries. This, I thought, was a moment too for the Gruaud Larose ‘34 (they would have learned their lesson about the temperature). I leant back feeling pleased and contented: my dispute with the waiter was quite forgotten, and I knew that I had behaved politely and with moderation when I found that our table was occupied.

“And Madame?” the waiter asked.

“A roll and butter and a cup of coffee,” Cary said.

“But Madame perhaps would like…” She gave him her sweetest smile as though to show me what I had missed. She said, “Just a roll and butter please. I’m not hungry. To keep Monsieur company.”

I said angrily, “In that case I’ll cancel…” but the waiter had already gone. I said, “How dare you?”

“What’s the matter, darling?”

“You know very well what’s the matter. You let me order…”

“But truly I’m not hungry, darling. I just wanted to be sentimental, that’s all. A roll and butter reminds me of the days when we weren’t rich. Don’t you remember that little café at the foot of the steps?”

“You are laughing at me.”

“But no, darling. Don’t you like thinking of those days at all?”

“Those days, those days—why don’t you talk about last week and how you were afraid to send anything to the laundry and we couldn’t afford the English papers and you couldn’t read the French ones and…”

“Don’t you remember how reckless you were when you gave five francs to a beggar? Oh, that reminds me…”

“What of?”

“I never meet the hungry young man now.”

“I don’t suppose he goes sunbathing.”

My caviare came and my vodka. The waiter said, “Would Madame like her coffee now?”

“No. No. I think I’ll toy with it while Monsieur has his—his…”

“Bresse à l’estragon, Madame.”

I’ve never enjoyed caviare less. She watched every helping I took, her chin in her hand, leaning forward in what I suppose she meant to be a devoted and wifely way. The toast crackled in the silence, but I was determined not to be beaten. I ate the next course grimly to an end and pretended not to notice how she spaced out her roll—she couldn’t have been enjoying her meal much either. She said to the waiter, “I’ll have another cup of coffee to keep my husband company with his strawberries. Wouldn’t you like a half bottle of champagne, darling?”

“No. If I drink any more I might lose my self-control…”

“Darling, what have I said? Don’t you like me to remember the days when we were poor and happy? After all, if I had married you now it might have been for your money. You know you were terribly nice when you gave me five hundred francs to gamble with. You watched the wheel so seriously.”

“Aren’t I serious now?”

“You don’t watch the wheel any longer. You watch your paper and your figures. Darling, we are on holiday.”

“We would have been if Dreuther had come.”

“We can afford to go by ourselves now. Let’s take a plane tomorrow—anywhere.”

“Not tomorrow. You see, according to my calculations the cycle of loss comes up tomorrow. Of course I’ll only use 1,000-franc tokens, so as to reduce the incident.”

“Then the day after…”

“That’s when I have to win back on double stakes. If you’ve finished your coffee it’s time for the ballet.”

“I’ve got a headache. I don’t want to go.”

“Of course you’ve got a headache eating nothing but rolls.”

“I ate nothing but rolls for three days and I never had a headache.” She got up from the table and said slowly, “But in those days I was in love.” I refused to quarrel and I went to the ballet alone.

I can’t remember which ballet it was—I don’t know that I could have remembered even the same night. My mind was occupied. I had to lose next day if I were to win the day after, otherwise my system was at fault. My whole stupendous run would prove to have been luck only—the kind of luck that presumably by the laws of chance turns up in so many centuries, just as those long-lived laborious monkeys who are set at typewriters eventually in the course of centuries produce the works of Shakespeare. The ballerina to me was hardly a woman so much as a ball spinning on the wheel: when she finished her final movement and came before the curtain alone it was as though she had come to rest triumphantly at zero and all the counters around her were shovelled away into the back—the two thousand francs from the cheap seats with the square tokens from the stalls, all jumbled together. I took a turn on the terrace to clear my head: this was where we had stood the first night watching together for the Seagull. I wished Cary had been with me and I nearly returned straight away to the hotel to give her all she asked. She was right: system or chance, who cared? We could catch a plane, extend our holiday: I had enough now to buy a partnership in some safe modest business without walls of glass and modern sculpture and a Gom on the eighth floor, and yet—it was like leaving a woman one loved untouched, untested, to go away and never know the truth of how the ball had come to rest in that particular order—the poetry of absolute chance or the determination of a closed system? I would be grateful for the poetry, but what pride I should feel if I proved the determinism.

The regiment was all assembled: strolling by the tables I felt like a commanding officer inspecting his unit. I would have liked to reprove the old lady for wearing the artificial daisies askew on her hat and to speak sharply to Mr Bowles for a lack of polish on his ear-appliance. A touch on my elbow and I handed out my 200 token to the lady who cadged. “Move more smartly to it,” I wanted to say to her, “the arm should be extended at full length and not bent at the elbow, and it’s time you did something about your hair.” They watched me pass with expressions of nervous regret, waiting for me to choose my table, and when I halted somebody rose and offered me a seat. But I had not come to win—I had come symbolically to make my first loss and go. So courteously I declined the seat, laid out a pattern of tokens and with a sense of triumph saw them shovelled away. Then I went back to the hotel.

Cary wasn’t there, and I was disappointed. I wanted to explain to her the importance of that symbolic loss, and instead I could only undress and climb between the humdrum sheets. I slept fitfully. I had grown used to Cary’s company, and I put on the light at one to see the time, and I was still alone. At half past two Cary woke me as she felt her way to bed in the dark.

“Where’ve you been?” I asked.

“Walking,” she said.

“All by yourself?”

“No.” The space between the beds filled with her hostility, but I knew better than to strike the first blow—she was waiting for that advantage. I pretended to roll over and settle for sleep. After a long time she said, “We walked down to the Sea Club.”

“It’s closed.”

“We found a way in—it was very big and eerie in the dark with all the chairs stacked.”

“Quite an adventure. What did you do for light?”

“Oh, there was bright moonlight. Philippe told me all about his life.”

“I hope you unstacked a chair.”

“We sat on the floor.”

“If it was a madly interesting life tell it me. Otherwise it’s late and I have to be…”

““Up early for the Casino.” I don’t suppose you’d find it an interesting life. It was so simple, idyllic. And he told it with such intensity. He went to school at a lycée.”

“Most people do in France.”

“His parents died and he lived with his grandmother.”

“What about his grandfather?”

“He was dead too.”

“Senile mortality is very high in France.”

“He did military service for two years.”

I said, “It certainly seems a life of striking originality.”

“You can sneer and sneer,” she said.

“But, dear, I’ve said nothing.”

“Of course you wouldn’t be interested. You are never interested in anybody different from yourself, and he’s young and very poor. He feeds on coffee and rolls.”

“Poor fellow,” I said with genuine sympathy.

“You are so uninterested you don’t even ask his name.”

“You said it was Philippe.”

“Philippe who?” she asked triumphantly.

“Dupont,” I said.

“It isn’t. It’s Chantier.”

“Ah well, I mixed him up with Dupont.”

“Who’s Dupont?”

“Perhaps they look alike.”

“I said who’s Dupont.”

“I’ve no idea,” I said. “But it’s awfully late.”

“You’re unbearable.” She slapped her pillow as though it were my face. There was a pause of several minutes and then she said bitterly, “You haven’t even asked whether I slept with him.”

“I’m sorry. Did you?”

“No. But he asked me to spend the night with him.”

“On the stacked chairs?”

“I’m having dinner with him tomorrow night.”

She was beginning to get me in the mood she wanted. I could stop myself no longer. I said, “Who the hell is this Philippe Chantier?”

“The hungry young man, of course.”

“Are you going to dine on coffee and rolls?”

“I’m paying for the dinner. He’s very proud, but I insisted. He’s taking me somewhere very cheap and quiet and simple—a sort of students’ place.”

“That’s lucky,” I said, “because I’m dining out too. Someone I met tonight at the Casino.”

“Who?”

“A Madame Dupont.”

“There’s no such name.”

“I couldn’t tell you the right one. I’m careful of a woman’s honour.”

“Who is she?”

“She was winning a lot tonight at baccarat and we got into conversation. Her husband died recently, she was very fond of him, and she’s sort of drowning her sorrows. I expect she’ll soon find comfort, because she’s young and beautiful and intelligent and rich.”

“Where are you having dinner?”

“Well, I don’t want to bring her here—there might be talk. And she’s too well known at the Salle Privée. She suggested driving to Cannes where nobody would know us.”

“Well, don’t bother to come back early. I shall be late.”

“Exactly what I was going to say to you, dear.” It was that sort of night. As I lay awake—and was aware of her wakefulness a few feet away—I thought it’s the Gom’s doing, he’s even ruining our marriage now. I said, “Dear, if you’ll give up your dinner, I’ll give up mine.”

She said, “I don’t even believe in yours. You invented it.”

“I swear to you—word of honour—that I’m giving a woman dinner tomorrow night.”

She said, “I can’t let Philippe down.” I thought gloomily: now I’ve got to do it, and where the hell can I find a woman?

2

We were very polite to each other at breakfast and at lunch. Cary even came into the Casino with me in the early evening, but I think her sole motive was to spot my woman. As it happened a young woman of great beauty was sitting at one of the tables, and Cary obviously drew the incorrect conclusion. She tried to see whether we exchanged glances and at last she could restrain her curiosity no longer. She said to me, “Aren’t you going to speak to her?”

“Who?”

“That girl.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, and tried to convey in my tone of voice that I was still guarding the honour of another. Cary said furiously. “I must be off. I can’t keep Philippe waiting. He’s so sensitive.”

My system was working: I was losing exactly what I had anticipated losing, but all the exhilaration had gone out of my calculations. I thought: suppose this isn’t what they call a lovers’ quarrel; suppose she’s really interested in this man; suppose this is the end. What do I do? What’s left for me? Fifteen thousand pounds was an inadequate answer.

I was not the only one who was losing regularly. Mr Bowles sat in his wheeled chair, directing his nurse who put the tokens on the cloth for him, leaning over his shoulder, pushing with her private rake. He too had a system, but I suspected that his system was not working out. He sent her back twice to the desk for more money, and the second time I saw that his pocket-book was empty except for a few thousand-franc notes. He rapped out his directions and she laid out his remaining tokens—a hundred and fifty thousand francs’ worth of them—the ball rolled and he lost the lot. Wheeling from the table he caught sight of me. “You,” he said, “what’s your name?”

“Bertram.”

“I’ve cashed too little. Don’t want to go back to the hotel. Lend me five million.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You know who I am. You know what I’m worth.”

“The hotel…” I began.

“They can’t let me have that amount till the banks open. I want it tonight. You’ve been winning plenty. I’ve watched you. I’ll pay you back before the evening’s out.”

“People have been known to lose.”

“I can’t hear what you say,” he said, shifting his earpiece.

“I’m sorry, Mr Other,” I said.

“My name’s not Other. You know me. I’m A.N. Bowles.”

“We call you A.N. Other in the office. Why don’t you go to the bank here and cash a cheque? There’s someone always on duty.”

“I haven’t got a French account, young man. Haven’t you heard of currency regulations?”

“They don’t seem to be troubling either of us much,” I said.

“You’d better come and have a cup of coffee and discuss the matter.”

“I’m busy just now.”

“Young man,” the Other said, “I’m your employer.”

“I don’t recognize anybody but the Gom.”

“Who on earth is the Gom?”

“Mr Dreuther.”

“The Gom. A.N. Other. There seems to be a curious lack of respect for the heads of your firm. Sir Walter Blixon—has he a name?”

“I believe the junior staff know him as the Blister.”

A thin smile momentarily touched the grey powdery features. “At least that name is expressive,” A.N. Other remarked. “Nurse, you can take a walk for half an hour. You can go as far as the harbour and back. You’ve always told me you like boats.”

When I turned the chair and began to push Bowles into the bar, a slight sweat had formed on my forehead and hands. An idea had come to me so fantastic that it drove away the thought of Cary and her hungry squire. I couldn’t even wait till I got to the bar. I said, “I’ve got fifteen million francs in my safe deposit box at the hotel. You can have them tonight in return for your shares.”

“Don’t be a fool. They are worth twenty million at par, and Dreuther or Blixon would give me fifty million for them. A glass of Perrier water, please.”

I got him his water. He said, “Now fetch me that five million.”

“No.”

“Young man,” he said, “I have an infallible system. I have promised myself for twenty years to break the bank. I will not be foiled by a mere five million. Go and fetch them. Unless you do I shall order your dismissal.”

“Do you think that threat means anything to a man with fifteen million in the safe? And tomorrow I shall have twenty million.”

“You’ve been losing all tonight. I’ve watched you.”

“I had expected to lose. It proves my system’s right.”

“There can’t be two fallible systems.”

“Yours, I’m afraid, will prove only too fallible.”

“Tell me how yours works.”

“No. But I’ll advise you on what is wrong with yours.”

“My system is my own.”

“How much have you won by it?”

“I have not yet begun to win. I am only at the first stage. Tonight I begin to win. Damn you, young man, fetch me that five million.”

“My system has won over fifteen million.”

I had got a false impression that the Other was a calm man. It is easy to appear calm when your movements are so confined. But when his fingers moved an inch on his knee he was exhibiting an uncontrollable emotion: his head swayed a minute degree and set the cord of his ear-appliance napping. It was like the tiny stir of air clinking a shutter that is yet the sign of a tornado’s approach.

He said, “Suppose we have hit on the same system.”

“We haven’t. I’ve been watching yours. I know it well. You can buy it in a paper packet at the stationer’s for a thousand francs.”

“That’s false. I thought it out myself, over the years, young man, in this chair. Twenty years of years.”

“It’s not only great minds that think alike. But the bank will never be broken by a thousand-franc system marked on the envelope Infallible.”

“I’ll prove you wrong. I’ll make you eat that packet. Fetch me the five million.”

“I’ve told you my terms.”

Backward and forward and sideways moved the hands in that space to which illness confined him. They ran like mice in a cage—I could imagine them nibbling at the intolerable bars. “You don’t know what you are asking. Don’t you realize you’d control the company if you chose to side with Blixon?”

“At least I would know something about the company controlled.”

“Listen. If you let me have the five million tonight, I will repay it in the morning and give you half my winnings.”

“There won’t be any winnings with your system.”

“You seem very sure of yours.”

“Yes.”

“I might consider selling the shares for twenty million plus your system.”

“I haven’t got twenty million.”

“Listen, if you are so sure of yourself you can take an option on the shares for fifteen million now. You pay the balance in twenty-four hours—9 a.m. tomorrow—or you forfeit your fifteen million. In addition you give me your system.”

“It’s a crazy proposal.”

“This is a crazy place.”

“If I don’t win five million tomorrow, I don’t have a single share?”

“Not a single share.” The fingers had stopped moving.

I laughed. “Doesn’t it occur to you that I’ve only got to phone the office tomorrow, and Blixon would advance me the money on the option? He wants the shares.”

“Tomorrow is Sunday and the agreement is for cash.”

“I don’t give you my system till the final payment,” I said.

“I shan’t want it if you’ve lost.”

“But I need money to play with.”

He took that carefully in. I said, “You can’t run a system on a few thousand francs.”

“You can pay ten million now,” he said, “on account of fifteen. If you lose, you’ll owe me five million.”

“How would you get it?”

He gave me a malign grin. “I’ll have your wages docked five hundred a year for ten years.”

I believe he meant it. In the world of Dreuther and Blixon he and his small packet of shares had survived only by the hardness, the meanness and the implacability of his character.

“I shall have to win ten million with five million.”

“You said you had the perfect system.”

“I thought I had.”

The old man was bitten by his own gamble: he jeered at me. “Better just lend me the five million and forget the option.”

I thought of the Gom at sea in his yacht with his headline guests and the two of us forgotten—what did he care about his assistant accountant? I remembered the way he had turned to Miss Bullen and said, “Arrange for Mr Bertrand (he couldn’t bother to get my name right) to be married.” Would he arrange through Miss Bullen for our children to be born and our parents to be buried? I thought, with these shares at Blixon’s call I shall have him fixed—he’ll be powerless, I’ll be employing him for just as long as I want him to feel the sting: then no more room on the eighth floor, no more yacht, no more of his ‘luxe, calme et volupté’. He had taken me in with his culture and his courtesy and his phoney kindness until I had nearly accepted him for the great man he believed himself to be. Now, I thought with a sadness for which I couldn’t account, he will be small enough to be in my hands, and I looked at my ink-stained fingers with disrelish.

“You see,” the Other said, “you don’t believe any longer.”

“Oh, yes, I do,” I said, “I’ll take your bet. I was just thinking of something else—that’s all.”

3

I went and fetched the money and we drew up the option right away on a sheet of notepaper and the nurse—who had returned by then—and the barman witnessed it. The option was to be taken up at 9 a.m. prompt in the same spot next day: the Other didn’t want his gambling to be interrupted before his dinner-hour whether by good or bad news. Then I made him buy me a glass of whisky, though Moses had less trouble in extracting his drink from a rock in Sinai, and I watched him being pushed back to the Salle Privée. To all intents and purposes, for the next twenty-four hours, I was the owner of Sitra. Neither Dreuther nor Blixon in their endless war could make a move without the consent of their assistant accountant. It was strange to think that neither was aware of how the control of the business had changed—from a friend of Dreuther to an enemy of Dreuther. Blixon would be down in Hampshire reading up tomorrow’s lessons, polishing up his pronunciation of the names in Judges—he would feel no exhilaration. And Dreuther—Dreuther was at sea, out of reach, playing bridge probably with his social lions—he would not be touched by the sense of insecurity. I ordered another whisky: I no longer doubted my system and I had no sense of regret. Blixon would be the first to hear: I would telephone to the office on Monday morning. It would be tactful to inform him of the new position through my chief, Arnold. There must be no temporary rapprochement between Dreuther and Blixon against the intruder: I would have Arnold explain to Blixon that for the time being he could count on me. Dreuther would not even hear of the matter unless he rang up his office from some port of call. Even that I could prevent: I could tell Arnold that the secret must be kept till Dreuther’s return, for then I would have the pleasure of giving him the information in person.

I went out to tell Cary the news, forgetting about our engagements: I wanted to see her face when I told her she was the wife of the man who controlled the company. You’ve hated my system, I wanted to say to her, and the hours I have spent at the Casino, but there was no vulgar cause—it wasn’t money I was after, and I quite forgot that until that evening I had no other motive than money. I began to believe that I had planned this from the first two-hundred-franc bet in the cuisine.

But of course there was no Cary to be found—“Madame went out with a gentleman,” the porter needlessly told me, and I remembered the date at the simple students’ café. Well, there had been a time in my life when I had found little difficulty in picking up a woman and I went back to the Casino to fulfil my word. But the beautiful woman had got a man with her now: their fingers nuzzled over their communal tokens, and I soon realized that single women who came to the Casino to gamble were seldom either beautiful or interested in men. The ball and not the bed was the focal point. I thought of Cary’s questions and my own lies—and there wasn’t a lie she wouldn’t see through.

I watched Bird’s Nest circling among the tables, making a quick pounce here and there, out of the croupier’s eye. She had a masterly technique: when a pile was large enough she would lay her fingers on a single piece and give a tender ogle at the owner as much as to say, “You are so generous and I am all yours for the taking.” She was so certain of her own appeal that no one had the heart to expose her error. Tonight she was wearing long amber ear-rings and a purple evening dress that exposed her best feature—her shoulders. Her shoulders were magnificent, wide and animal, but then, like a revolving light, her face inevitably came round, the untidy false blonde hair tangled up with the ear-rings (I am sure she thought of her wisps and strands as “wanton locks”), and that smile fixed like a fossil. Watching her revolve I began to revolve too: I was caught into her orbit, and I became aware that here alone was the answer. I had to dine with a woman and in the whole Casino this was the only woman who would dine with me. As she swerved away from an attendant with a sweep of drapery and a slight clank, clank from her evening bag where I supposed she had stowed her hundred-franc tokens, I touched her hand, “Dear lady,” I said—the phrase astonished me: it was as though it had been placed on my tongue, and certainly it seemed to belong to the same period as the mauve evening dress, the magnificent shoulders. “Dear lady,” I repeated with increasing astonishment (I almost expected a small white moustache to burgeon on my upper lip), “you will I trust excuse a stranger…”

I think she must have gone in constant fear of the attendants because her instinctive ogle expanded with her relief at seeing me into a positive blaze of light: it flapped across the waste of her face like sheet lightning. “Oh, not a stranger,” she said, and I was relieved to find that she was English and that at least I would not have to talk bad French throughout the evening. “I have been watching with such admiration your great good fortune.” (She had indeed profited from it on several occasions.)

“I was wondering, dear lady,” (the extraordinary phrase slipped out again) “if you would do me the honour of dining. I have no one with whom to celebrate my luck.”

“But, of course, colonel, it would be a great pleasure.” At that I really put my hand up to my mouth to see if the moustache were there. We both seemed to have learnt parts in a play—I began to fear what the third act might hold. I noticed she was edging towards the restaurant of the Salle Privée, but all my snobbery revolted at dining there with so notorious a figure of fun. I said, “I thought perhaps—if we could take a little air—it’s such a beautiful evening, the heat of these rooms, some small exclusive place…” I would have suggested a private room if I had not feared that my intentions might have been misunderstood and welcomed.

“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, colonel.”

We swept out (there was no other word for it) and I prayed that Cary and her young man were safely at dinner in their cheap café; it would have been intolerable if she had seen me at that moment. The woman imposed unreality. I was persuaded that to the white moustache had now been added a collapsible opera hat and a scarlet lined cloak.

I said, “A horse-cab, don’t you think, on a night so balmy…”

“Barmy, colonel?”

“Spelt with an L,” I explained, but I don’t think she understood.

When we were seated in the cab I appealed for her help. “I am really quite a stranger here. I have dined out so seldom. Where can we go that is quiet…and exclusive?” I was determined that the place should be exclusive: if it excluded all the world but the two of us, I would be the less embarrassed.

“There is a small new restaurant—a club really, very comme il faut. It is called Orphée. Rather expensive, I fear, colonel.”

“Expense is no object.” I gave the name to the driver and leant back. As she was sitting bolt upright I was able to shelter behind her bulk. I said, “When were you last in Cheltenham…?”

The devil was about us that night. Whatever I said had been written into my part. She replied promptly, “Dear Cheltenham…how did you discover…?”

“Well, you know, a handsome woman catches one’s eye.”

“You live there too?”

“One of those little houses off Queen’s Parade.”

“We must be near neighbours,” and to emphasize our nearness I could feel her massive mauve flank move ever so slightly against me. I was glad that the cab drew up: we hadn’t gone more than two hundred yards from the Casino.

“A bit highbrow, what?” I said, glaring up as I felt a colonel should do at the lit mask above the door made out of an enormous hollowed potato. We had to brush our way through shreds of cotton which were meant, I suppose, to represent cobwebs. The little room inside was hung with photographs of authors, actors and film stars, and we had to sign our name in a book, thus apparently becoming life members of the club. I wrote Robert Devereux. I could feel her leaning against my shoulder, squinnying at the signature.

The restaurant was crowded and rather garishly lit by bare globes. There were a lot of mirrors that must have been bought at the sale of some old restaurant, for they advertised ancient specialities like ‘Mutton Chopps’.

She said, “Cocteau was at the opening.”

“Who’s he?”

“Oh, colonel,” she said, “you are laughing at me.”

I said, “Oh well, you know, in my kind of life one hasn’t much time for books,” and suddenly, just under the word Chopps, I saw Cary gazing back at me.

“How I envy a life of action,” my companion said, and laid down her bag—chinkingly—on the table. The whole bird’s nest shook and the amber ear-rings swung as she turned to me and said confidingly, “Tell me, colonel. I love—passionately—to hear men talk of their lives.” (Cary’s eyes in the mirror became enormous: her mouth was a little open as though she had been caught in mid-sentence.)

I said, “Oh well, there’s not much to tell.”

“Men are so much more modest than women. If I had deeds of derring-do to my credit I would never tire of telling them. Cheltenham must seem very quiet to you.” I heard a spoon drop at a neighbouring table.

I said weakly, “Oh well, I don’t mind quiet. What will you eat?”

“I have such a teeny-weeny appetite, colonel. A langouste thermidor…”

“And a bottle of the Widow?” I could have bitten my tongue—the hideous words were out before I could stop them. I wanted to turn to Cary and say, “This isn’t me. I didn’t write this. It’s my part. Blame the author.”

A voice I didn’t know said, “But I adore you. I adore everything you do, the way you talk, the way you are silent. I wish I could speak English much much better so that I could tell you…” I turned slowly sideways and looked at Cary. I had never, since I kissed her first, seen so complete a blush. Bird’s Nest said, “So young and so romantic, aren’t they? I always think the English are too reticent. That’s what makes our encounter so strange. Half an hour ago we didn’t even know each other, and now here we are with—what did you call it?—a bottle of the Widow. How I love these masculine phrases. Are you married, colonel?”

“Well, in a way…”

“How do you mean?”

“We’re sort of separated.”

“How sad. I’m separated too—by death. Perhaps that’s less sad.”

A voice I had begun to detest said, “Your husband does not deserve you to be faithful. To leave you all night while he gambles…”

“He’s not gambling tonight,” Cary said. She added in a strangled voice, “He’s in Cannes having dinner with a young, beautiful, intelligent widow.”

“Don’t cry, chérie.”

“I’m not crying, Philippe. I’m, I’m, I’m laughing. If he could see me now…”

“He would be wild with jealousy, I hope. Are you jealous?”

“So touching,” Bird’s Nest said. “One can’t help listening. One seems to glimpse an entire life…”

The whole affair seemed to me abominably onesided. “Women are so gullible,” I said, raising my voice a little. “My wife started going around with a young man because he looked hungry. Perhaps he was hungry. He would take her to expensive restaurants like this and make her pay. Do you know what they charge for a langouste thermidor here? It’s so expensive, they don’t even put the price on the bill. A simple inexpensive café for students.”

“I don’t understand, colonel. Has something upset you?”

“And the wine. Don’t you think I had to draw the line at his drinking wine at my expense?”

“You must have been treated shamefully.”

Somebody put down a glass so hard that it broke. The detestable voice said, “Chérie, that is good fortune for us. Look—I put some wine behind your ears, on the top of your head…Do you think your husband will sleep with the beautiful lady in Cannes?”

“Sleep is about all he’s capable of doing.”

I got to my feet and shouted at her—I could stand no more. “How dare you say such things?”

“Philippe,” Cary said, “let’s go.” She put some notes on the table and led him out. He was too surprised to object.

Bird’s Nest said, “They were really going too far, weren’t they? Talking like that in public. I love your old–fashioned chivalry, colonel. The young must learn.”

She took nearly an hour before she got through her langouste thermidor and her strawberry ice. She began to tell me the whole story of her life, beginning over the langouste with a childhood in an old rectory in Kent and ending over the ice-cream with her small widow’s portion at Cheltenham. She was staying in a little pension in Monte Carlo because it was ‘select’, and I suppose her methods at the Casino very nearly paid for her keep.

I got rid of her at last and went home. I was afraid that Cary wouldn’t be there, but she was sitting up in bed reading one of those smart phrase books that are got up like a novel and are terribly bright and gay. When I opened the door she looked up over the book and said, “Entrez, mon colonel.”

“What are you reading that for?” I said.

“J’essaye de faire mon français un peu meilleur.”

“Why?”

“I might live in France one day.”

“Oh? Who with? The hungry student?”

“Philippe has asked me to marry him.”

“After what his dinner must have cost you tonight, I suppose he had to take an honourable line.”

“I told him there was a temporary impediment.”

“You mean your bad French?”

“I meant you, of course.”

Suddenly she began to cry, burying her head under the phrase book so that I shouldn’t see. I sat down on the bed and put my hand on her side: I felt tired: I felt we were very far from the public house at the corner: I felt we had been married a long time and it hadn’t worked. I had no idea how to pick up the pieces—I have never been good with my hands.

I said, “Let’s go home.”

“Not wait any more for Mr Dreuther?”

“Why should we? I practically own Mr Dreuther now.”

I hadn’t meant to tell her, but out it came, all of it. She emerged from under the phrase book and she stopped crying. I told her that when I had extracted the last fun out of being Dreuther’s boss, I would sell my shares at a good profit to Blixon—and that would be the final end of Dreuther. “We’ll be comfortably off,” I said.

“We won’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Darling, I’m not hysterical now and I’m not angry. I’m talking really seriously. I didn’t marry a well-off man. I married a man I met in the bar of the Volunteer—someone who liked cold sausages and travelled by bus because taxis were too expensive. He hadn’t had a very good life. He’d married a bitch who ran away from him. I wanted—oh, enormously—to give him fun. Now suddenly I’ve woken up in bed with a man who can buy all the fun he wants and his idea of fun is to ruin an old man who was kind to him. What if Dreuther did forget he’d invited you? He meant it at the time. He looked at you and you seemed tired and he liked you—just like that, for no reason, just as I liked you the first time in the Volunteer. That’s how human beings work. They don’t work on a damned system like your roulette.”

“The system hasn’t done so badly for you.”

“Oh yes, it has. It’s destroyed me. I’ve lived for you and now I’ve lost you.”

“You haven’t. I’m here.”

“When I return home and go into the bar of the Volunteer, you won’t be there. When I’m waiting at the 19 bus stop you won’t be there either. You won’t be anywhere where I can find you. You’ll be driving down to your place in Hampshire like Sir Walter Blixon. Darling, you’ve been very lucky and you’ve won a lot of money, but I don’t like you any more.”

I sneered back at her, but there wasn’t any heart in my sneer, “You only love the poor, I suppose?”

“Isn’t that better than only loving the rich? Darling, I’m going to sleep on the sofa in the sitting-room.” We had a sitting-room again now, and a dressing-room for me, just as at the beginning.

I said, “Don’t bother. I’ve got my own bed.”

I went out on to the balcony. It was like the first night when we had quarrelled, but this time she didn’t come out on to her balcony, and we hadn’t quarrelled. I wanted to knock on her door and say something, but I didn’t know what word to use. All my words seemed to chink like the tokens in Bird’s Nests’ bag.

4

I didn’t see her for breakfast, nor for lunch. I went into the Casino after lunch and for the first time I didn’t want to win. But the devil was certainly in my system and win I did. I had the money to pay Bowles, I owned the shares, and I wished I had lost my last two hundred francs in the kitchen. After that I walked along the terrace—sometimes one gets ideas walking, but I didn’t. And then looking down into the harbour I saw a white boat which hadn’t been there before. She was flying the British flag and I recognized her from newspaper photographs. She was the Seagull. The Gom had come after all—he wasn’t much more than a week late. I thought, you bastard, if only you’d troubled to keep your promise, I wouldn’t have lost Cary. I wasn’t important enough for you to remember and now I’m too important for her to love. Well, if I’ve lost her, you are going to lose everything too—Blixon will probably buy your boat.

I walked into the bar and the Gom was there. He had just ordered himself a Pernod and he was talking with easy familiarity to the barman, speaking perfect French. Whatever the man’s language he would have spoken it perfectly—he was of the Pentecostal type. Yet he wasn’t the Dreuther of the eighth floor now—he had put an old yachting cap on the bar, he had several days’ growth of white beard and he wore an old and baggy pair of blue trousers and a sweat shut. When I came in he didn’t stop talking, but I could see him examining me in the mirror behind the bar. He kept on glancing at me as though I pricked a memory. I realized that he had not only forgotten his invitation, he had even forgotten me.

“Mr Dreuther,” I said.

He turned as slowly as he could; he was obviously trying to remember.

“You don’t remember me,” I said.

“Oh, my dear chap, I remember you perfectly. Let me see, the last time we met…”

“My name’s Bertram.” I could see it didn’t mean a thing to him.

He said, “Of course. Of course. Been here long?”

“We arrived about nine days ago. We hoped you’d be in time for our wedding.”

“Wedding?” I could see it all coming back to him and for a moment he was foxed for an explanation.

“My dear chap, I hope everything was all right. We were caught with engine trouble. Out of touch. You know how it can be at sea. Now you are coming on board tonight, I hope. Get your bags packed. I want to sail at midnight, Monte Carlo is too much of a temptation for me. How about you? Been losing money?” He was sweeping his mistake into limbo on a tide of words.

“No, I’ve gained a little.”

“Hang on to it. It’s the only way.” He was rapidly paying for his Pernod—he wanted to get away from his mistake as quickly as possible. “Follow me down. We’ll eat on board tonight. The three of us. No one else joins the boat until Portofino. Tell them I’ll settle the bill.”

“It’s not necessary. I can manage.”

“I can’t have you out of pocket because I’m late.” He snatched his yachting cap and was gone. I could almost imagine he had a seaman’s lurch. He had given me no time to develop my hatred or even to tell him that I didn’t know where my wife was. I put the money for Bowles in an envelope and asked the porter to have it waiting for him in the bar of the Casino at nine. Then I went upstairs and began to pack my bags. I had a wild hope that if I could get Cary to sea our whole trouble might be left on shore in the luxury hotel, in the great ornate Salle Privée. I would have liked to stake all our troubles en plein and to lose them. It was only when I had finished my packing and went into her room that I knew I hadn’t a hope. The room was more than empty—it was vacant. It was where somebody had been and wouldn’t be again. The dressing-table was waiting for another user—the only thing left was the conventional letter. Women read so many magazines—they know the formulas for parting. I think they have even learned the words by heart from the glossy pages—they are impersonal. “Darling, I’m off. I couldn’t bear to tell you that and what’s the use? We don’t fit any more.” I thought of nine days ago and how we’d urged the old horse-cab on. Yes, they said at the desk, Madame had checked out an hour ago.

I told them to keep my bags. Dreuther wouldn’t want me to stay on board after what I was going to tell him.

5

Dreuther had shaved and changed his shirt and was reading a book in his little lounge. He again had the grand air of the eighth floor. The bar stood hospitably open and the flowers looked as though they had been newly arranged. I wasn’t impressed. I knew about his kindness, but kindness at the skin-deep level can ruin people. Kindness has got to care. I carried a knife in my mind and waited to use it.

“But your wife has not come with you?”

“She’ll be following,” I said.

“And your bags?”

“The bags too. Could I have a drink?”

I had no compunction in gaining the Dutch courage for assassination at his own expense. I had two whiskies very quickly. He poured them out himself, got the ice, served me like an equal. And he had no idea that in fact I was his superior.

“You look tired,” he said. “The holiday has not done you good.”

“I have worries.”

“Did you remember to bring the Racine?”

“Yes.” I was momentarily touched that he had remembered that detail.

“Perhaps after dinner you would read a little. I was once fond of him like you. There is so much that I have forgotten. Age is a great period of forgetting.” I remembered what Cary had said—after all, at his age, hadn’t he a right to forget? But when I thought of Cary I could have cried into my glass.

“We forget a lot of things near at hand, but we remember the past. I am often troubled by the past. Unnecessary misunderstanding. Unnecessary pain.”

“Could I have another whisky?”

“Of course.” He got up promptly to serve me. Leaning over his little bar, with his wide patriarchal back turned to me, he said, “Do not mind talking. We are not on the eighth floor now. Two men on holiday. Friends I hope. Drink. There is no harm, if one is unhappy, in being a little drunk.”

I was a little drunk—more than a little. I couldn’t keep my voice steady when I said, “My wife isn’t coming. She’s left me.”

“A quarrel?”

“Not a real quarrel. Not words you can deny or forget.”

“Is she in love with someone else?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps.”

“Tell me. I can’t help. But one needs a listener.” Using the pronoun ‘one’ he made mine a general condition from which all men were destined to suffer. ‘One’ is born, ‘one’ dies, ‘one’ loses love. I told him everything—except what I had come to the boat to tell him. I told him of our coffee-and-roll lunches, of my winnings, of the hungry student and the Bird’s Nest. I told him of our words over the waiter, I told him of her simple statement, “I don’t like you any more.” I even (it seems incredible to me now) showed him her letter.

He said, “I am very sorry. If I had not been—delayed, this would not have happened. On the other hand you would not have won all this money.”

I said, “Damn the money.”

“That is very easy to say. I have said it so often myself. But here I am—” he waved his hand round the little modest saloon that it took a very rich man to afford. “If I had meant what I said. I wouldn’t be here.”

“I do mean it.”

“Then you have hope.”

“She may be sleeping with him at this moment.”

“That does not destroy hope. So often one has discovered how much one loves by sleeping with another.”

“What shall I do?”

“Have a cigar.”

“I don’t like them.”

“You will not mind—” He lit one himself. “These too cost money. Certainly I do not like money—who could? The coins are badly designed and the paper is unclean. Like newspapers picked up in a public park, but I like cigars, this yacht, hospitality, and I suppose, I am afraid, yes,” he added lowering his cigar-point like a flag, “power.” I had even forgotten that he no longer had it. “One has to put up with this money.”

“Do you know where they will be?” he asked me.

“Celebrating, I imagine—on coffee and rolls.”

“I have had four wives. Are you sure you want her back?”

“Yes.”

“It can be very peaceful without them.”

“I’m not looking for peace—yet.”

“My second wife—I was still young then—she left me, and I made the mistake of winning her back. It took me years to lose her again after that. She was a good woman. It is not easy to lose a good woman. If one must marry it is better to marry a bad woman.”

“I did the first time and it wasn’t much fun.”

“How interesting.” He took a long pull and watched the smoke drift and dissolve. “Still, it didn’t last. A good woman lasts. Blixon is married to a good woman. She sits next to him in the pew on Sundays, thinking about the menu for dinner. She is an excellent housekeeper and has great taste in interior decoration. Her hands are plump—she says proudly that they are good pastry hands—but that is not what a woman’s hands should be for. She is a moral woman and when he leaves her during the week, he feels quite secure. But he has to go back, that is the terrible thing, he has to go back.”

“Cary isn’t that good.” I looked at the last of my whisky. “I wish to hell you could tell me what to do.”

“I am too old and the young would call me cynical. People don’t like reality. They don’t like common sense. Until age forces it on them. I would say—bring your bags, forget the whole matter—my whisky supply is large, for a few days anaesthetize yourself. I have some most agreeable guests coming on board tomorrow at Portofino—you will like Celia Charteris very much. At Naples there are several bordels if you find celibacy difficult. I will telephone to the office extending your leave. Be content with adventure. And don’t try to domesticate adventure.”

I said, “I want Cary. That’s all. Not adventure.”

“My second wife left me because she said I was too ambitious. She didn’t realize that it is only the dying who are free from ambition. And they probably have the ambition to live. Some men disguise their ambition—that’s all. I was in a position to help this young man my wife loved. He soon showed his ambition then. There are different types of ambition—that is all, and my wife found she preferred mine. Because it was limitless. They do not feel the infinite as an unworthy rival, but for a man to prefer the desk of an assistant manager—that is an insult.” He looked mournfully at his long cigar-ash. “All the same one should not meddle.”

“I would do anything…”

“Your wife is romantic. This young man’s poverty appeals to her. I think I see a plan. Help yourself to another drink while I tell it to you…”