Loser Takes All (10 page)

‘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

D
REUTHER
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 . . .'

1

I
WENT
down the gang-plank, swaying slightly from the effect of the whisky, and walked up the hill from the port. It was a quarter past eight, and the sight of a clock reminded me for the first time of what I had not told Dreuther. Dreuther had said, ‘Don't use money. Money is so obviously sordid. But those little round scarlet disks . . . You will see, no gambler can resist them.' I went to the Casino and looked for the pair: they were not there. Then I changed all the spare money I had, and when I came out my pocket clinked like Bird's Nests' bag.

It took me only a quarter of an hour to find them: they were in the café where we used to go for our meals. I watched them for a little, unseen from the door. Cary didn't look happy. She had gone there, she told me later, to prove to herself that she no longer loved me, that no sentiment attached to the places where we had been together, and she found that the proof didn't work out. She was miserable to see a stranger sitting in my chair, and the stranger had a habit she detested – he stuffed the roll into his mouth and bit off the buttered end. When he had finished he counted his resources and then asked her if she would mind not talking for a minute while he checked his system. ‘We can go up to five hundred francs tonight in the kitchen,' he said, ‘that is five one-hundred-franc stakes.' He was sitting there with a pencil and paper when I arrived.

I said ‘Hullo,' from the doorway and Cary turned. She nearly smiled at me from habit – I could see the smile sailing up in her eyes and then she plucked it down like a boy might pluck his kite back to earth, out of the wind.

‘What are you doing here?' she said.

‘I wanted to make sure you were all right.'

‘I am all right.'

‘Sometimes one does something and wishes one hadn't.'

‘Not me.'

‘I wish you'd be quiet,' the young man said. ‘What I am working out is very complicated.'

‘Philippe, it's – my husband.'

He looked up, ‘Oh, good evening,' and began to tap nervously on the table with the end of his pencil.

‘I hope you are looking after my wife properly.'

‘That's nothing to do with you,' he said.

‘There are certain things you ought to know in order to make her happy. She hates skin on hot milk. Look, her saucer's full of scraps. You should attend to that before you pour out. She hates small sharp noises – for instance, the crackle of toast – or that roll you are eating. You must never chew nuts either. I hope you are listening. That noise with the pencil will not please her.'

‘I wish you would go away,' the young man said.

‘I would rather like to talk to my wife alone.'

‘I don't want to be alone with you,' Cary said.

‘You heard her. Please go.' It was strange how cleverly Dreuther had forecast our dialogue. I began to have hope.

‘I'm sorry. I must insist.'

‘You've no right . . .'

Cary said, ‘Unless you leave us, we'll both walk out of here. Philippe, pay the bill.'

‘
Chérie
, I do want to get my system straight.'

‘I tell you what I'll do,' I said. ‘I'm a much older man than you are, but I'll offer to fight you. If I win, I talk to Cary alone. If you win, I go away and never trouble you again.'

‘I won't have you fighting,' Cary said.

‘You heard her.'

‘Alternatively, I'll pay for half an hour with her.'

‘How dare you?' Cary said.

I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out fistfuls of yellow and red tokens – five-hundred-franc tokens, thousand-franc tokens, shooting them out on to the table between the coffee cups. He couldn't keep his eyes off them. They covered his system. I said, ‘I'd rather fight. This is all the money I've got left.'

He stared at them. He said, ‘I don't want to brawl.'

Cary said, ‘Philippe, you wouldn't . . .'

I said, ‘It's the only way you can get out of here without fighting.'

‘
Chérie
, he only wants half an hour. After all, it's his right. There are things for you to settle together, and with this money I can really prove my system.'

She said to him in a voice to which in the past week I had become accustomed, ‘All right. Take his money. Get along into that damned Casino. You've been thinking of nothing else all the evening.'

He had just enough grace to hesitate. ‘I'll see you in half an hour,
chérie
.'

I said, ‘I promise I'll bring her to the Casino myself. I have something to do there.' Then I called him back from the door, ‘You've dropped a piece,' and he came back and felt for it under the table. Watching Cary's face I almost wished I hadn't won.