Loser Takes All Read online

  I opened the envelope on the bed and counted the notes. I said, ‘He’s lent us 250,000 francs.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘What it is to be a friend of the Gom. I wish I liked the bastard.’

  ‘How will we ever repay it?’

  ‘The Gom will have to help. He kept us here.’

  ‘We’ll spend as little as we can, won’t we, darling?’

  ‘But no more coffee and rolls. Tonight we’ll have a party – the wedding party.’ I didn’t care a damn about the Gruaud Larose 1934: I hired a car and we drove to a little village in the mountains called Peille. Everything was rocky grey and gorse-yellow in the late sun which flowed out between the cold shoulders of the hills where the shadows waited. Mules stood in the street and the car was too large to reach the inn, and in the inn there was only one long table to seat fifty people. We sat alone at it and watched the darkness come, and they gave us their own red wine which wasn’t very good and fat pigeons roasted and fruit and cheese. The villagers laughed in the next room over their drinks, and soon we could hardly see the enormous hump of hills.

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She said after a while, ‘I wish we weren’t going back to Monte Carlo. Couldn’t we send the car home and stay? We wouldn’t mind about toothbrushes tonight, and tomorrow we could go – shopping.’ She said the last word with an upward inflexion as though we were at the Ritz and the Rue de la Paix round the corner.

  ‘A toothbrush at Cartier’s,’ I said.

  ‘Lanvin for two pyjama tops.’

  ‘Soap at Guerlain.’

  ‘A few cheap handkerchiefs in the Rue de Rivoli.’ She said, ‘I can’t think of anything else we’d want, can you? Did you ever come to a place like this with Dirty?’ Dirty was the name she always used for my first wife who had been dark and plump and sexy with pekingese eyes.

  ‘Never.’

  ‘I like being somewhere without footprints.’

  I looked at my watch. It was nearly ten and there was half an hour’s drive back. I said, ‘I suppose we’d better go.’

  ‘It’s not late.’

  ‘Well, tonight I want to give my system a real chance. If I use 200-franc tokens I’ve got just enough capital.’

  ‘You aren’t going to the Casino?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘But that’s stealing.’

  ‘No it isn’t. He gave us the money to enjoy ourselves with.’

  ‘Then half of it’s mine. You shan’t gamble with my half.’

  ‘Dear, be reasonable. I need the capital. The system needs the capital. When I’ve won you shall have the whole lot back with interest. We’ll pay our bills, we’ll come back here if you like for all the rest of our stay.’

  ‘You’ll never win. Look at the others.’

  ‘They aren’t mathematicians. I am.’

  An old man with a beard guided us to our car through the dark arched streets: she wouldn’t speak, she wouldn’t even take my arm. I said, ‘This is our celebration night, darling. Don’t be mean.’

  ‘What have I said that’s mean?’ How they defeat us with their silences: one can’t repeat a silence or throw it back as one can a word. In the same silence we drove home. As we came out over Monaco the city was floodlit, the Museum, the Casino, the Cathedral, the Palace – the fireworks went up from the rock. It was the last day of a week of illuminations: I remembered the first day and our quarrel and the three balconies.

  I said, ‘We’ve never seen the Salle Privée. We must go there tonight.’

  ‘What’s special about tonight?’ she said.

  ‘Le mari doit protection à sa femme, la femme obéissance à son mari.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘You told the mayor you agreed to that. There’s another article you agreed to – “The wife is obliged to live with her husband and to follow him wherever he judges it right to reside.” Well, tonight we are damned well going to reside in the Salle Privée.’

  ‘I didn’t understand what he was saying.’ The worst was always over when she consented to argue.

  ‘Please, dear, come and see my system win.’

  ‘I shall only see it lose,’ she said and she spoke with strict accuracy.

  At 10.30 exactly I began to play and to lose and I lost steadily. I couldn’t change tables because this was the only table in the Salle Privée at which one could play with a 200-franc minimum. Cary wanted me to stop when I had lost half of the manager’s loan, but I still believed that the moment would come, the tide turn, my figures prove correct.

  ‘How much is left?’ she asked.

  ‘This.’ I indicated the five two-hundred-franc tokens. She got up and left me: I think she was crying, but I couldn’t follow her without losing my place at the table.

  And when I came back to our room in the hotel I was crying too – there are occasions when a man can cry without shame. She was awake: I could tell by the way she had dressed herself for bed how coldly she was awaiting me. She never wore the bottoms of her pyjamas except to show anger or indifference, but when she saw me sitting there on the end of the bed, shaking with the effort to control my tears, her anger went. She said, ‘Darling, don’t take on so. We’ll manage somehow.’ She scrambled out of bed and put her arms round me. ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘I’ve been mean to you. It might happen to anybody. Look, we’ll try the ices, not the coffee and rolls, and the Seagull’s sure to come. Sooner or later.’

  ‘I don’t mind now if it never comes,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be bitter, darling. It happens to everybody, losing.’

  ‘But I haven’t lost,’ I said, ‘I’ve won.’

  She took her arms away. ‘Won?’

  ‘I’ve won five million francs.’

  ‘Then why are you crying?’

  ‘I’m laughing. We are rich.’

  ‘Oh, you beast,’ she said, ‘and I was sorry for you,’ and she scrambled back under the bedclothes.

  PART TWO

  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, untasted, to go away and never know the truth of how the ball had come to res
t 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.’