Loser Takes All Read online

  ‘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 . . .’

  PART THREE

  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 a
gain.’

  ‘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.

  She was trying hard not to cry. She said, ‘I suppose you think you’ve been very clever.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You exposed him all right. You’ve demonstrated your point. What do I do now?’

  ‘Come on board for one night. You’ve got a separate cabin. We can put you off in Genoa tomorrow.’

  ‘I suppose you hope I’ll change my mind?’

  ‘Yes. I hope. It’s not a very big hope, but it’s better than despair. You see, I love you.’

  ‘Would you promise never to gamble again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you throw away that damned system?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a song when I was young – ‘and then my heart stood still’. That was what I felt when she began to make conditions. ‘Have you told him,’ she asked, ‘about the shares?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can’t go on that boat with him not knowing. It would be too mean.’

  ‘I promise I’ll clear it up – before sleep.’

  She had her head lowered, so that I couldn’t see her face, and she sat very silent. I had used all my arguments: there was nothing more for me to say either. The night was full of nothing but chinking cups and running water. At last she said, ‘What are we waiting for?’

  We picked up all the bags and then we walked across to the Casino. She hadn’t wanted to come, but I said, ‘I promised to bring you.’ I left her in the hall and went through to the kitchen – he wasn’t there. Then I went to the bar, and then on to the Salle Privée. There he was, playing for the first time with a 500-franc minimum. A. N. Other was at the same table – the five-thousand squares littered the table around him. He sat in his chair with his fingers moving like mice. I leant over his shoulder and gave him his news, but he made no sign of interest, for the ball was bouncing now around the wheel. It came to rest in zero as I reached Philippe and the bank raked in their winnings.

  I said to Philippe, ‘Cary’s here. I kept my promise.’

  ‘Tell her not to come in. I am winning – except the last round. I do not want to be disturbed.’

  ‘She won’t disturb you ever again.’

  ‘I have won 10,000.’

  ‘But it’s loser takes all,’ I said. ‘Lose these for me. It’s all I’ve got left.’

  I didn’t wait for him to protest – and I don’t think he would have protested.

  2

  THE Gom that night was a perfect host. He showed himself so ignorant of our trouble that we began to forget it ourselves. There were cocktails before dinner and champagne at dinner and I could see that Cary was getting a little uncertain in her choice of words. She went to bed early because she wanted to leave me alone with the Gom. We both came out on to the deck to say good night to her. A small breeze went by, tasting of the sea, and the clouds hid moon and stars and made the riding lights on the yachts shine the brighter.

  The Gom said, ‘Tomorrow night you shall persuade me that Racine is the greater poet, but tonight let me think of Baudelaire.’ He leant on the rail and recited in a low voice, and I wondered to whom it was in the past that the old wise man with limitless ambitions was speaking.

  ‘Vois sur ces canaux

  Dormir ces vaisseaux

  Dont l’humeur est vagabonde;

  C’est pour assouvir

  Ton moindre désir

  Qu’ils viennent du bout du monde.’

  He turned and said. ‘I am speaking that to you, my dear, from him,’ and he put his arm around her shoulder, and then gave her a push towards the companion-way. She gave a sound like a small animal in pain and was gone.

  ‘What was the matter?’ the Gom asked.

  ‘She was remembering something.’ I knew what it was she was remembering, but I didn’t tell him.

  We went back into the saloon and the Gom poured out our drinks. He said, ‘I’m glad the trick worked.’

  ‘She may still decide to get off at Genoa.’

  ‘She won’t. In any case we’ll leave out Genoa.’ He added thoughtfully, ‘It’s not the first time I’ve kidnapped a woman.’

  He gave me my glass. ‘I shan’t keep you up drinking tonight, but I wanted to tell you something. I’m getting a new assistant accountant.’

  ‘You mean – you are giving me notice?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Unpredictable, the old bastard, I thought – to tell me this now, as his guest. Could it be that in my absence he had met and spoken with the Other? He said, ‘You’ll need a bigger income now you are married. I’m putting Arnold in charge of General Enterprises. You are to be chief accountant in his place. Drink your whisky and go to bed. They are getting up the anchor now.’

  When I went down I wondered whether Cary’s cabin would be locked, but it wasn’t. She sat on one bunk with her knees drawn up to her chin staring through the porthole. The engines had started and we were moving out. The lights of the port wheeled around the wall. She said, ‘Have you told him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You promised,’ she said. ‘I can’t go sailing down Italy in this boat with him not knowing. He’s been so terribly kind . . .’

  ‘I owe him everything,’ I said. ‘It was he who told me how to act to get you back. The trick was his. I could think of nothing. I was in despair.’

  ‘Then you must tell him. Now. At once.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell. You don’t think after he’d done that for me, I’d cheat him with Blixon?’

  ‘But the shares?’

  ‘When I went to find Philippe, I took back the money I’d left for the Other. The option’s forfeited. The Other’s fifteen million richer – and Philippe has our last five million if he hasn’t lost it. We are back where we were.’ The words were the wrong ones. I said, ‘If only we could be.’

  ‘We never can be.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘I love you so much more. Because I’ve been terribly mean to you and nearly lost you.’

  We said very little for a long time: there was no room for anything but our bodies in the cramped berth, but some time towards morning, when the circle of the porthole was grey, I woke her and told her what the Gom had said to me. ‘We shan’t be rich,’ I added quickly for fear of losing her again, ‘but we can afford Bournemouth next year . . .’

  ‘No,’ she said sleepily. ‘Let’s go to Le Touquet. They have a Casino there. But don’t let’s have a system.’

  There was a promise I’d forgotten. I got up and took the great system out of my jacket-pocket and tore it in little pieces and threw them
through the porthole – the white scraps blew back in our wake.

  The sleepy voice said, ‘Darling, it’s terribly cold. It’s snowing.’

  ‘I’ll close the porthole.’

  ‘No. Just come back.’

  Footnotes

  * At the period of this story the franc stood at about 1,200 francs to the pound.