Loser Takes All Read online

  ‘And the Other, Sir Walter. Surely you never forget the Other. Mr Bertrand, please sit down and look at these accounts. Did they pass through your hands?’

  With relief I saw that they belonged to a small subsidiary company with which I did not deal. ‘I have nothing to do with General Enterprises, sir.’

  ‘Never mind. You may know something about figures – it is obvious that no one else does. Please see if you notice anything wrong.’

  The worst was obviously over. Dreuther had exposed an error and he did not really worry about a solution. ‘Have a cigar, Sir Walter. You see, you cannot do without me yet.’ He lit his own cigar. ‘You have found the error, Mr Bertrand?’

  ‘Yes. In the General Purposes account.’

  ‘Exactly. Take your time, Mr Bertrand.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, Dreuther, I have a table at the Berkeley . . .’

  ‘Of course, Sir Walter, if you are so hungry . . . I can deal with this matter.’

  ‘Coming, Naismith?’ The stranger rose, made a kind of bob at Dreuther and sidled after Blixon.

  ‘And you, Arnold, you have had no lunch?’

  ‘It really doesn’t matter, Mr Dreuther.’

  ‘You must pardon me. It had never crossed my mind . . . this – lunch hour – you call it?’

  ‘Really it doesn’t . . .’

  ‘Mr Bertrand has had lunch. He and I will worry out this problem between us. Will you tell Miss Bullen that I am ready for my glass of milk? Would you like a glass of milk, Mr Bertrand?’

  ‘No thank you, sir.’

  I found myself alone with the Gom. I felt exposed as he watched me fumble with the papers – on the eighth floor, on a mountain top, like one of those Old Testament characters to whom a King commanded, ‘Prophesy.’

  ‘Where do you lunch, Mr Bertrand?’

  ‘At the Volunteer.’

  ‘Is that a good restaurant?’

  ‘It’s a public house, sir.’

  ‘They serve meals?’

  ‘Snacks.’

  ‘How very interesting.’ He fell silent and I began all over again to add, carry, subtract. I was for a time puzzled. Human beings are capable of the most simple errors, the failing to carry a figure on, but we had all the best machines and a machine should be incapable . . .

  ‘I feel at sea, Mr Bertrand,’ Dreuther said.

  ‘I confess, sir, I am a little too.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean in that way, not in that way at all. There is no hurry. We will put all that right. In our good time. I mean that when Sir Walter leaves my room I have a sense of calm, peace. I think of my yacht.’ The cigar smoke blew between us. ‘Luxe, calme et volupté,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t find any ordre or beauté in these figures, sir.’

  ‘You read Baudelaire, Mr Bertrand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He is my favourite poet.’

  ‘I prefer Racine, sir. But I expect that is the mathematician in me.’

  ‘Don’t depend too much on his classicism. There are moments in Racine, Mr Bertrand, when – the abyss opens.’ I was aware of being watched while I started checking all over again. Then came the verdict. ‘How very interesting.’

  But now at last I was really absorbed. I have never been able to understand the layman’s indifference to figures. The veriest fool vaguely appreciates the poetry of the solar system – ‘the army of unalterable law’ – and yet he cannot see glamour in the stately march of the columns, certain figures moving upwards, crossing over, one digit running the whole length of every column, emerging, like some elaborate drill at Trooping the Colour. I was following one small figure now, dodging in pursuit.

  ‘What computers do General Enterprises use, sir?’

  ‘You must ask Miss Bullen.’

  ‘I’m certain it’s the Revolg. We gave them up five years ago. In old age they have a tendency to slip, but only when the 2 and the 7 are in relationship, and then not always, and then only in subtraction not addition. Now, here, sir, if you’ll look, the combination happens four times, but only once has the slip occurred . . .’

  ‘Please don’t explain to me, Mr Bertrand. It would be useless.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong except mechanically. Put these figures through one of our new machines. And scrap the Revolg (they’ve served long enough).’

  I sat back on the sofa with a gasp of triumph. I felt the equal of any man. It had really been a very neat piece of detection. So simple when you knew, but everyone before me had accepted the perfection of the machine and no machine is perfect; in every join, rivet, screw lies original sin. I tried to explain that to Dreuther, but I was out of breath.

  ‘How very interesting, Mr Bertrand. I’m glad we have solved the problem while Sir Walter is satisfying his carnal desires. Are you sure you won’t have a glass of milk?’

  ‘No thank you, sir. I must be getting back to the ground floor.’

  ‘No hurry. You look tired, Mr Bertrand. When did you last have a holiday?’

  ‘My annual leave’s just coming round, sir. As a matter of fact I’m taking the opportunity to get married.’

  ‘Really. How interesting. Have you received your clock?’

  ‘Clock?’

  ‘I believe they always give a clock here. The first time, Mr Bertrand?’

  ‘Well . . . the second.’

  ‘Ah, the second stands much more chance.’

  The Gom had certainly a way with him. He made you talk, confide, he gave an effect of being really interested – and I think he always was, for a moment. He was a prisoner in his room, and small facts of the outer world came to him with the shock of novelty; he entertained them as an imprisoned man entertains a mouse or treasures a leaf blown through the bars. I said, ‘We are going to Bournemouth for our honeymoon.’

  ‘Ah, that I do not think is a good idea. That is too classical. You should take the young woman to the south – the bay of Rio de Janeiro . . .’

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t afford it, sir.’

  ‘The sun would do you good, Mr Bertrand. You are pale. Some would suggest South Africa, but that is no better than Bournemouth.’

  ‘I’m afraid that anyway . . .’

  ‘I have it, Mr Bertrand. You and your beautiful young wife will come on my yacht. All my guests leave me at Nice and Monte Carlo. I will pick you up then on the 30th. We will sail down the coast of Italy, the Bay of Naples, Capri, Ischia.’

  ‘I’m afraid, sir, it’s a bit difficult. I’m very, very grateful, but you see we are getting married on the 30th.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘St Luke’s, Maida Hill.’

  ‘St Luke’s! You are being too classical again, my friend. We must not be too classical with a beautiful young wife. I assume she is young, Mr Bertrand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And beautiful?’

  ‘I think so, sir.’

  ‘Then you must be married at Monte Carlo. Before the mayor. With myself as witness. On the 30th. At night we sail for Portofino. That is better than St Luke’s or Bournemouth.’

  ‘But surely, sir, there would be legal difficulties . . .’

  But he had already rung for Miss Bullen. I think he would have made a great actor; he already saw himself in the part of a Haroun who could raise a man from obscurity and make him the ruler over provinces. I have an idea too that he thought it would make Blixon jealous. It was the same attitude which he had taken to the knighthood. Blixon was probably planning to procure the Prime Minister to dinner. This would show how little Dreuther valued rank. It would take the salt out of any social success Blixon might have.

  Miss Bullen appeared with a second glass of milk. ‘Miss Bullen, please arrange with our Nice office to have Mr Bertrand married in Monte Carlo on the 30th at 4 p.m.’

  ‘On the 30th, sir?’

  ‘There may be residence qualifications – they must settle those. They can include him on their staff for the last six months. They will have to see the British Consul too. You
had better speak on the telephone to M. Tissand, but don’t bother me about it. I want to hear no more of it. Oh, and tell Sir Walter Blixon that we have found an error in the Revolg machines. They have got to be changed at once. He had better consult Mr Bertrand who will advise him. I want to hear no more of that either. The muddle has given us a most exhausting morning. Well, Mr Bertrand, until the 30th then. Bring a set of Racine with you. Leave the rest to Miss Bullen. Everything is settled.’ So he believed, of course, but there was still Cary.

  5

  THE next day was a Saturday. I met Cary at the Volunteer and walked all the way home with her: it was one of those spring afternoons when you can smell the country in a London street, tree smells and flower smells blew up into Oxford Street from Hyde Park, the Green Park, St James’s, Kensington Gardens.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I wish we could go a long, long way to somewhere very hot and very gay and very –’ I had to pull her back or she would have been under a bus. I was always saving her from buses and taxis – sometimes I wondered how she kept alive when I wasn’t there.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘we can,’ and while we waited for the traffic lights to change I told her.

  I don’t know why I expected such serious opposition: perhaps it was partly because she had been so set on a church wedding, the choir and the cake and all the nonsense. ‘Think,’ I said, ‘to be married in Monte Carlo instead of Maida Hill. The sea down below and the yacht waiting . . .’ As I had never been there, the details rather petered out.

  She said, ‘There’s sea at Bournemouth too. Or so I’ve heard.’

  ‘The Italian coast.’

  ‘In company with your Mr Dreuther.’

  ‘We won’t share a cabin with him,’ I said, ‘and I don’t suppose the hotel in Bournemouth will be quite empty.’

  ‘Darling, I did want to be married at St Luke’s.’

  ‘Think of the Town Hall at Monte Carlo – the mayor in all his robes – the, the . . .’

  ‘Does it count?’

  ‘Of course it counts.’

  ‘It would be rather fun if it didn’t count, and then we could marry at St Luke’s when we came back.’

  ‘That would be living in sin.’

  ‘I’d love to live in sin.’

  ‘You could,’ I said, ‘any time. This afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t count London,’ she said. ‘That would be just making love. Living in sin is – oh, striped umbrellas and 80 in the shade and grapes – and a fearfully gay bathing suit. I’ll have to have a new bathing suit.’

  I thought all was well then, but she caught sight of one of those pointed spires sticking up over the plane trees a square ahead. ‘We’ve sent out all the invitations. What will Aunt Marion say?’ (She had lived with Aunt Marion ever since her parents were killed in the blitz.)

  ‘Just tell her the truth. She’d much rather get picture-postcards from Italy than from Bournemouth.’

  ‘It will hurt the Vicar’s feelings.’

  ‘Only to the extent of a fiver.’

  ‘Nobody will really believe we are married.’ She added a moment later (she was nothing if not honest), ‘That will be fun.’

  Then the pendulum swung again and she went thoughtfully on, ‘You are only hiring your clothes. But my dress is being made.’

  ‘There’s time to turn it into an evening dress. After all, that’s what it would have become anyway.’

  The church loomed in sight: it was a hideous church, but no more hideous than St Luke’s. It was grey and flinty and soot-stained, with reddish steps to the street the colour of clay and a text on a board that said, ‘Come to Me all ye who are heavy laden,’ as much as to say, ‘Abandon Hope.’ A wedding had just taken place, and there was a dingy high-tide line of girls with perambulators and squealing children and dogs and grim middle-aged matrons who looked as though they had come to curse.

  I said, ‘Let’s watch. This might be happening to us.’

  A lot of girls in long mauve dresses with lacy Dutch caps came out and lined the steps: they looked with fear at the nursemaids and the matrons and one or two giggled nervously – you could hardly blame them. Two photographers set up cameras to cover the entrance, an arch which seemed to be decorated with stone clover leaves, and then the victims emerged followed by a rabble of relatives.

  ‘It’s terrible,’ Cary said, ‘terrible. To think that might be you and me.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t an incipient goitre and I’m – well, damn it, I don’t blush and I know where to put my hands.’

  A car was waiting decorated with white ribbons and all the bridesmaids produced bags of paper rose petals and flung them at the young couple.

  ‘They are lucky,’ I said. ‘Rice is still short, but I’m certain Aunt Marion can pull strings with the grocer.’

  ‘She’d never do such a thing.’

  ‘You can trust no one at a wedding. It brings out a strange atavistic cruelty. Now that they are not allowed to bed the bride, they try to damage the bridegroom. Look,’ I said, clutching Cary’s arm. A small boy, encouraged by one of the sombre matrons, had stolen up to the door of the car and, just as the bridegroom stooped to climb in, he launched at close range a handful of rice full in the unfortunate young man’s face.

  ‘When you can only spare a cupful,’ I said, ‘you are told to wait until you can see the whites of your enemy’s eyes.’

  ‘But it’s terrible,’ Cary said.

  ‘That, my dear child, is what is called a church marriage.’

  ‘But ours wouldn’t be like that. It’s going to be very quiet – only near relatives.’

  ‘You forget the highways and the hedges. It’s a Christian tradition. That boy wasn’t a relation. Trust me. I know. I’ve been married in church myself.’

  ‘You were married in church? You never told me,’ she said. ‘In that case I’d much rather be married in a town hall. You haven’t been married in a town hall too, have you?’

  ‘No, it will be the first time – and the last time.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Cary said, ‘touch wood.’

  So there she was two weeks later rubbing away at the horse’s knee, asking for luck, and the great lounge of the Monte Carlo hotel spread emptily around us, and I said, ‘That’s that. We’re alone, Cary.’ (One didn’t count the receptionist and the cashier and the concierge and the two men with our luggage and the old couple sitting on a sofa, for Mr Dreuther, they told me, had not yet arrived and we had the night to ourselves.)

  6

  WE had dinner on the terrace of the hotel and watched people going into the Casino. Cary said, ‘We ought to look in for the fun. After all, we aren’t gamblers.’

  ‘We couldn’t be,’ I said, ‘not with fifty pounds basic.’ We had decided not to use her allowance in case we found ourselves able to go to Le Touquet for a week in the winter.

  ‘You are an accountant,’ Cary said. ‘You ought to know all about systems.’

  ‘Systems are damned expensive,’ I said. I had discovered that we had a suite already booked for us by Miss Bullen and I had no idea what it would cost. Our passports were still under different names, so I suppose it was reasonable that we should have two rooms, but the sitting-room seemed unnecessary. Perhaps we were supposed to entertain in it after the wedding. I said, ‘You need a million francs* to play a system, and then you are up against the limit. The bank can’t lose.’

  ‘I thought someone broke the bank once.’

  ‘Only in a comic song,’ I said.

  ‘It would be awful if we were really gamblers,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to care so much about money. You don’t, do you?’

  ‘No,’ I said and meant it. All I had in my mind that night was the wonder whether we would sleep together. We never had. It was that kind of marriage. I had tried the other kind, and now I would have waited months if I could gain in that way all the rest of the years. But tonight I didn’t want to wait any longer. I was as fussed as a young man – I found I could no lo
nger see into Cary’s mind. She was twenty years younger, she had never been married before, and the game was all in her hands. I couldn’t even interpret what she said to me. For instance as we crossed to the Casino she said, ‘We’ll only stay ten minutes. I’m terribly tired.’ Was that hint in my favour or against me? Or was it just a plain statement of fact? Had the problem in my mind never occurred to her, or had she already made up her mind so certainly that the problem didn’t exist? Was she assuming I knew the reason?

  I had thought when they showed us our rooms I would discover, but all she had said with enormous glee was, ‘Darling. What extravagance.’

  I took the credit from Miss Bullen. ‘It’ only for one night. Then we’ll be on the boat.’ There was one huge double room and one very small single room and a medium-sized sitting-room in between: all three had balconies. I felt as though we had taken the whole front of the hotel. First she depressed me by saying, ‘We could have had two single rooms,’ and then she contradicted that by saying, ‘All the beds are double ones,’ and then down I went again when she looked at the sofa in the sitting-room and said, ‘I wouldn’t have minded sleeping on that.’ I was no wiser, and so we talked about systems. I didn’t care a damn for systems.

  After we had shown our passports and got our tickets we entered what they call the cuisine, where the small stakes are laid. ‘This is where I belong,’ Cary said, and nothing was less true. The old veterans sat around the tables with their charts and their pads and their pencils, making notes of every number. They looked, some of them, like opium smokers, dehydrated. There was a very tiny brown old lady with a straw hat of forty years ago covered in daisies: her left claw rested on the edge of the table like the handle of an umbrella and her right held a chip worth one hundred francs. After the ball had rolled four times she placed her piece and lost it. Then she began waiting again. A young man leant over her shoulder, staked 100 on the last twelve numbers, won and departed. ‘There goes a wise man,’ I said, but when we came opposite the bar, he was there with a glass of beer and a sandwich. ‘Celebrating three hundred francs,’ I said.